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The Domestic Blunders 
of Women 



The 

Domestic Blunders 
of Women 



BY 

A MERE MAN 



WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS 
By " Y0RICK"> 



NEW YORK 

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 

LAFAYETTE PLACE 

igoo 



TWO COPIES RKCEIVEO. 

library of C0Bgra««^ 
Copyright 1900 ^fflacj af tjiy 

MAR 9 -1900 

Funk & Wagnalls C»¥gm}fr of Ci>pyplg{,«% 



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55865 






CONTENTS 



PAGE 

INTRODUCTION . . . . . vii 

CHAP. 

I. THINGS IN GENERAL .... I 
II. PURCHASING HOUSEHOLD REQUISITES 9 
IIL women's IGNORANCE OF THE VALUE 

OF MONEY 23 

IV. THE MANAGEMENT OF SERVANTS . 34 

V. THE MISTAKES OF " THE MISSUS " . 48 

VI. THE HIGHLY RESPECTABLE PERSON . 61 

VIL THE DOMESTIC INFERNO . . -74 

VIIL THE BOTTOMLESS PIT ... 84 

IX. CUPBOARD SKELETONS . . .92 

X. THE MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN . 100 

XL THE HOUSE DIRTY . . . . II8 

XII. THE HOUSE HIDEOUS . . . I30 

XIII. THE BEST REMEDY FOR ALL BLUNDERS I42 

CORRESPONDENCE . . . . I5I 



INTRODUCTION 

A Mere Man's bold and unsparing attack 
on woman's stronghold in the home, made 
originally in a serial form, provoked at once, 
as must have been expected, a general upris- 
ing of the sex in strenuous defense of their 
position and capacities. 

Some few ranged themselves as his allies; 
but the greater number pelted him with ar- 
row-flights of " winged words," not always 
feathered with discretion, not ever pointed 
with keen logic, but, beyond question, shot 
with shrewd purpose and determined aim. 

Men also joined in the melee, and, no 
doubt, on both sides some shafts hit their 
mark. Now that the time has come to take 
a calm view of this field of onset and resist- 
ance, it is but fair, in recounting " A Mere 
Man's " sweeping charges, to let those who 
have assisted or withstood him speak also for 
themselves, even if they are content to con- 
vii 



viii Introduction 

demn him and his views in the spirit of Lu- 
cetta in the Two Gentlemen of Verona: 

** I have no other but a woman's reason. 
I think him so because I think him so." 

Our readers will therefore find at the end 
of this book a selection of letters, assenting 
or protesting, solemn or sarcastic, grave or 
gay, that admirably illustrate the interest al- 
ready taken by the public in the alleged 
" Blunders of Women," as set forth by " A 
Mere Man." 



THE DOMESTIC BLUNDERS 
OF WOMEN 




CHAPTER I 

THINGS IN GENERAL 

HERE would seem to be only 
two ways to write of women 
— either to call them angels, 
with the poets, or to abuse 
them as the short-legged race, 
with Shopenhauer, or the 
" slum woman " and the " cow woman," 
with Sarah Grand. I have no desire to imi- 
tate any of these authorities. 

My mission is one of sheer pity. I mar- 
ried my wife because I loved her. I have 
worked hard all my life because I loved her, 
and now I am writing this series of papers 
because I love my daughters who are grow- 
ing up. I look back on my many years of 



2 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
hard work, during which I have earned a 
good income, and I ask myself, as a business 
man should — what have I got for it? My 
banking account shows me that, though my 
income has year by year increased, I have no 
more worldly riches than when I started. 
My check-book proves I have spent less 
money on myself than I did as a bachelor. 

Again, I ask myself : What has become of 
it? The answer is very plain. It has not 
gone in luxuries. Dollar by dollar, dime by 
dime, it has been expended on rent, taxes, 
servants, schooling, and tradesmen's books 
—with a capital "T" and a capital " B." 
This is not very satisfactory, but I hope I 
am too good a business-man not to ask my- 
self : Has it been well invested ? If I have, so 
far, only been sinking money, what am I go- 
ing to get out of it ? In other words, What 
are my assets, and what are they worth ? 

My assets are my wife and my daughters. 
If I do not put a fictitious value on the good- 
will of love, I have to admit that my wife is 
not an improving property — that is to say, 
she is not likely now to become more valu- 



Things in General 3 

able to me than she has been in my home life. 
My daughters I must set down as a mere 
speculation. They may or may not turn out 
well. 

Every man has two branches of business. 
His profession or employment — commonly 
called his " office " — and his " house." My 
" office," as I have said, has improved. I am 
forced to admit my "house" has not. / 




manage my " office." My partner manages 
my " house." In every young business there 
are bound to be extravagances. But greater 
perfection in the quality of goods and econ- 
omy should come with experience in man- 
agement, and in time the " house " should at 
least show a profit on paper. When I ask 
myself, in my hard, business-man way : " Is 
the 'house' branch of my business better 



4 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
managed? " I am bound to admit, in spite 
of all the affection I have for my partner, 
that it is not. Not only is there no more 
saving, but there is no more comfort; indeed, 
there is less saving, and less comfort. 

The next thing to consider is : Am I any 
worse off than other business men ? In fair- 
ness to my partner, I am bound to admit that 
I am not. My friends all admit that whereas 
their " offices " bring in more money every 
year, their " houses " become every year a 
greater drain, and that they seem to get less 
and less comfort out of them, despite the fact 
that therr partners have now got several as- 
sistants in the shape of growing-up daugh- 
ters. 

A character in " Adam Bede," if I remem- 
ber right, tells that incomparable housekeep- 
er, Mrs. Poyser, that he believes most func- 
tions of life could be much better managed 
by men than women. I must say, when I 
come to sit down and think about it, the con- 
viction is forced upon me that he was right. 
I do not know any detail of domestic life that 
I, or any man of my acquaintance, could not 



Things in General 5 

manage better than women do, but I am open 
to conviction of the contrary, if any woman 
is brave enough to come forward and refute 
me with proof. I do not expect or desire 
that women should compete with men in the 
business and work of the world; at the same 
time, I would not attempt to deny them the 
right, so long as they can prove their capac- 
ity. This is the very thing they are not 
able to do. There should be nothing simpler 
in the world than to manage a house, a few 
servants, and a few children on a regular 
income. As regards the cooking and ser- 
vants, men manage restaurants and clubs; as 
regards children, men manage schools. Yet, 
where is the house, governed by a woman 
with nothing else in the wide world to do, 
which is as comfortably and as profitably 
managed as these institutions are? 

The reasons for all this I have been to 
some trouble to discover, a!nd I propose 
to take each knotty point separately, and 
not only show why women fail in the 
simplest details of administration, but to 
prove that any man who could give his 



6 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
time to the subject would manage a house, 
a few servants, and a few children to much 
greater advantage than any woman. 

It would scarcely be worth while doing 
this, but for the fact that women may benefit 
materially by my instruction. I confess I am 
thinking more of my own wife and daugh- 
ters than of any benevolent intentions of im- 
proving women in general. It may be said 
this might, with advantage, be done in the 
privacy of my own home. A moment's 
thought will prove the impossibility of any 
such method. A woman always regards her 
management of a house as perfect. At any 
rate, she never permits any father, husband, 
brother, or son to interfere. Even to offer 
any advice is always to be met with the 
stereotyped answer : 

" Oh ! you men, you think you can man- 
age anything, simply because you can find 
fault with matters of the difficulties of which 
you have not the remotest idea. The house 
is woman's vocation, though we know that 
old maid's children and bachelor's wives are 



Things in General 7 

perfect; and if you were to interfere, I 
should have all the servants leaving." 

This, and much more equally profitless 
and impractical assertion, every man has 
heard many and many a time. No ! women 
will not listen to reason or brook interfer- 
ence. By carefully watching their habits, 
however, I have noticed that they will read 
and believe anything that appears in print. 



;^. 




I have surreptitiously studied the papers 
which they read for " Advice to Housekeep- 
ers." I can easily understand, after reading 
them, why women fail absolutely in their 
duties. It is a case of the blind leading the 



8 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
blind. The papers I refer to are entirely 
written by women, and women who obvious- 
ly have no houses or husbands or families to 
look after, or they would not be writing 
newspaper articles. The writers of this 
"advice," which is so carefully perused, 
seem to regard the duties of women from 
no more serious point of view than how to 
make soup out of potato skins and a chop 
bone; how to trim a hat; how to mend 
gloves, and how to furnish a house out of old 
orange or cigar boxes, a few yards of cheap 
yellow gauze, and a bunch of dyed pampas 
grass — all of which is mess. 

It strikes me that the really serious criti- 
cism and counsel which I am prepared to 
give to women generally, and to my own 
family in particular, would have a good 
chance of being brought into the family 
circle by men in my own state, and of being 
read and taken to heart by wives and daugh- 
ters as sadly in need of advice as mine are. 
Hence this book. 



CT 



CHAPTER II 

PURCHASING HOUSEHOLD REQUISITES 



Jfc nl wir Y contention is, that any 

^^^ m\\ man could manage his 

I^HP U house better than his 

^^V^J jl wife, his mother, his 

^^B / sister or his daughters, 

^^^1 or a combination of 

^^^^k any of them. Good! 

^^^^H Now to the proof. I 

^^^^ want to give women 

every chance, so I will 

take their own standard of men. Every 

woman, at some time or other, has said that 

the way to a man's heart is down his throat. 

This is a polite way of saying that men are 

gourmets, if not gourmands. I don't believe 

it, but there may be something in it. Anyway, 

I accept it for the moment, and it stands to 

reason that as most men work all their days 

9 



lO The Domestic Blunders of Women 

from the time they are boys till they are old 
men, and seldom get any more out of it than 
a cart-horse, merely harness, food, and a bed 
at night, they have a right to expect that 
their stable should be comfortable, their 
bran-mash fit to eat, and their rest undis- 
turbed. It must be accepted that nearly all 
we earn is spent on our homes and the luxury 
of our women folk. What do we get out of 
it? 

All that we ask are comfort and clothes 
and food. Not a very exacting ambition, 
surely. The question is, do we get it? Let 
us see. 

The proudest boast of a mother is that her 
daughter is a thoroughly well-brought-up 
girl. This may mean she is able to cut out 
her own clothes, trim her own hats, order 
a pound of candles, pay her bills with her 
parent's money, speak French indifferently, 
and, if put to it, cook a chop or boil a po- 
tato. To cook a chop well is not very easy — 
to women — but let us suppose that a woman 
can cook a chop really well. That is, from 
the woman's point of view, the very highest 



Purchasing Household Requisites 1 1 
point of perfection she can reach, and having 
cooked a chop well, she is supposed to be 
absolutely proficient in all branches of her 
business. 

This chop is, like the rib from which she 
sprang, the root of all evil. A woman al- 
ways begins a thing from the wrong end. 
The chop is typical. A woman never thinks 
that the cooking is absolutely the last stage 
of the chop, and that she has not the most 
elementary knowledge of any other stage. 
A woman to whom this remark was made 
would say that she knows how to buy the 
chop. That is precisely what I want to get at. 
Does any woman know how to buy a chop? 
— that is to say, has she the very remotest 
idea how to buy the best chop for the least 
amount of money ? What is the procedure ? 
A woman wants a chop, because a chop is the 
first thing she thinks of. She goes round to 
the butcher, and in nine cases out of ten tells 
him to send her round some nice chops. Just 
imagine even a woman buying a hat on such 
a principle ! 

In the tenth case, the exceptional woman 



12 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
asks the butcher if he has any nice chops. 
He says " yes," of course. She asks to see 
them, and possibly says they look too thin, 
or too fat. In such cases, the butcher says 
they won't look too thin or too fat when they 
are cooked, and with this assurance they are 
ordered. If the husband finds fault with the 
chops being all fat or all bone, she says they 
were the best chops the butcher had — as 
though that was any reason for buying them 
— and shelters herself further by saying the 
servant must have spoilt them in the cooking. 
An inexperienced husband who asked how 
much he had to pay for the advantage of 
eating fat or looking at bone would, in nine 
cases out of ten, be told that the " book " had 
not come in yet. In the tenth case, he would 
be told that Silversides, the butcher, always 
charged fourteen cents per pound for chops, 
and further cross-examining would elicit the 
fact that no allowance was made for bone or 
fat. No wonder that butchers make for- 
tunes. They have only women to deal with, 
and there isn't a woman living who knows 
v/hat beef or mutton costs per pound on the 



Purchasing Household Requisites 13 

field, and what is a fair middleman's or a 
butcher's profit. It is just the same with fish, 
poultry, vegetables, groceries, bread, or any 
of the other requisites of household food. 




TAey have only women to deal with. 

The shopkeeper makes any price he likes, and 
no woman ever knows what she ought to 
pay, or thinks of acquiring knowledge to en- 
able her to make a bargain. 



14 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

And here comes in one of the most extra- 
ordinary features of the so-called economical 
woman. She will willingly pay the butcher 
for tons of bone and fat in the year, but if 
you ask why you can't have a cauliflower to 
make a half dollar's worth of tough beef 
palatable, you will be told cauliflowers are 
far too dear. Imagining they are at least 
five dollars a piece, you ask how much they 
are charging for cauliflowers ? You are told 
eighteen cents. Thunderstruck, you ask 
how much they usually cost, and you are told 
seventeen cents and that no woman who re- 
spects herself would dream of paying the ex- 
tra cent. Just imagine a woman buying a 
hat, and saying hat-pins to keep it on her 
head were too dear. 

The fact of the matter is, women have not 
the least idea of the value of anything — least 
of all, money. In the first years of their 
married life, or management of a house, they 
tell you (afterwards) they were robbed. 
Women's idea of being robbed consists in 
trades-people not conspiring to look after the 
interest of people who do not know their 



Purchasing Household Requisites 15 

business, but are prepared to accept any- 
thing, rather than have the trouble of learn- 
ing and looking after their own business, and 
getting the best value for the least amount 
of money. 

In the succeeding years they have picked 
up a superficial knowledge of what they 
think are the normal prices, and these they 
stick to with a pertinacity that, while provid- 
ing you with joints which are far too large, 
and are half-wasted, denies you a cauliflower 
or a carrot because they are a cent too dear. 
It is the same with fish. A woman will pro- 
vide you with three times too much mack- 
erel, costing perhaps forty-five cents, but will 
deny you a pound of salmon because its price 
is eighteen cents. 

Women, I have said, have no idea of the 
value of anything — least of all, money. I 
shall have further occasion to demonstrate 
this, so I may now say they have no idea of 
business. Let me show them how men go 
about the conducting of the other branch of 
their business, namely, " the office." I have 
said that when a woman knows how to cook 



1 6 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

a chop, she considers she is a perfectly quali- 
fied partner for a man of business. This is 
as false a deduction as that a man who can 
lay a brick is a qualified architect or builder. 

Let me take an example. I would take 
my own business, only that it would be 
argued that it was exceptional, and that I 
was a specialist, and taking an unfair ad- 
vantage. Of course, all properly conducted 
businesses are the same, so I will take my 
publisher's business, so that he, who is my 
partner in this book, can the better judge of 
the truth of my general statements, tho I 
may err in detail. 

You, sir, are a magazine proprietor and a 
publisher of books, and I assume that before 
you undertook to publish this book you made 
something like the following calculations. 
You, no doubt, settled that a certain class of 
paper was necessary to print it on, and hav- 
ing sent for a papermaker you asked for his 
lowest estimate for that class of goods, tell- 
ing him yours would be a large order, and 
that you would pay on delivery, or in three 
months, or in some way most convenient to 



Purchasing Household Requisites 1 7 

you both. Having got it, I presume you got 
other estimates, and took the most advan- 
tageous. The same method, I have no 
doubt, you followed with the printers. Hav- 
ing got your papermaker and your printer, 
no doubt you set down the rent of your office, 
the salaries of clerks and the amounts you 
have to pay me, and, to make a long story 
short, estimated the cost against the possible 
revenue from sales. If the first few numbers 
of one of your enterprises did not answer 
your expectations, I presume you would set 
about making alterations, cutting down ex- 
penses in one direction, and extending them 
in another, till you began to see a profit on 
your investment, and possibly established a 
sinking fund. 

There is no use in proving this too far, be- 
cause it is what every man does, and every 
man who has the pluck has tried to explain 
it to his wife, and he can do so again by 
giving her this book, if she is disposed to 
learn and apply it to her own case. 

Every woman, when she marries, enters 
upon a new business, which at once produces 



1 8 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

a regular income of some kind. It is useless 
to argue that it does not, because, in that 
case, a woman simply proves her further 
unbusinesslike ability by embarking from 
purely sentimental reasons in a wild-cat 
speculation, no better than gambling on the 
turf or the Stock Exchange. Now, how has 
she been prepared for this venture? Has 
she studied her subjects thoroughly, so as to 
avoid being what she calls " robbed " by 
tradesmen, and has she studied how to cater 
for the public to which she appeals for sup- 
port, namely, her husband ? 

Does she go to a butcher, for example, and 
ask for his estimate, and when she has got it, 
say: 

" I intend to spend so much a week; I in- 
tend to deal with you for a year or more if 
you give satisfaction; and I pay every week. 
I know that all these things are considera- 
tions to you, and that, as a business man, 
steady custom and ready money are an ad- 
vantage to you. Under these circumstances, 
what will you take off your prices, or what 
discount will you allow me? " 



Purchasing Household Requisites 19 

Is there any man living who can tell me 
such a thing could not be done ? 

Is there any woman living who can tell 
me she has done it ? 

If so, I shall be glad to hear it, and I think 
most women will be as surprised as I shall 
be. Every middle-class house in a large city 
burns from fifteen to thirty tons of coal a 
year. Is there any woman with a small 
cellar, who has written to the secretary of a 
coal company and offered to send her check 
for twenty tons of coal, provided he will 
deliver it as required? Independent of 
strikes, this would save any fairly large 
house about fifteen dollars a year. Women 
suffer under the delusion that their custom is 
too small to make any difference to trades- 
men, and they hate and fear nothing more 
than to change their trades-people. To ex- 
plain the folly of this, I will relate an inci- 
dent in my own family life. 

Some years ago we moved into a pictur- 
esque, but not very thriving, suburb. It has 
always been my custom to have a fresh roll 
for my breakfast, the rest of the house 



20 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

preferring toast or bread one day old. One 
was ordered from the best baker in the 
district. Morning after morning it arrived 
late, and, on my insisting on it being de- 
livered in time, it was fetched by one of our 
servants without my knowledge. One day 
she forgot, and I discovered the foolish 
method of pandering to the caprices of the 
baker. I insisted that a letter of complaint 
should be written, and the account closed. 
My wife begged. I was firm. She wept and 
pleaded that the baker was the only one in 
the district who could make bread fit to eat. 
I said I didn't care; I would punish him. 
My family scoffed, said the baker was richer 
than we were, and cared nothing about our 
small account. I said we would see. The 
letter was written. The account closed. 
That evening the baker's man waylaid me, 
and begged for my custom, promising punc- 
tuality. I stood to my guns. The next 
morning the baker called personally, and 
apologized, and said, as a business man, I 
was right, but he hoped I would give him 
another trial. I said I would think about it. 



Purchasing Household Requisites 21 

His wife interviewed my wife, and his 
daughter interviewed my daughters. I had 
taught them all a lesson, and so I consented 




I said I would think about it. 



to renew my custom in a month. From that 
day, till we left, the baker's man altered his 
round, and my rolls were never late. Our 



22 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

bread book came to about fifty cents a week, 
but the baker was a good business man, and 
good business men cannot afford, tho they 
may be richer than their customers, to 
throw away any business bringing in twenty- 
six dollars a year. If women would only, as 
a body, learn this elementary lesson in do- 
mestic economy, they would very much 
lighten their lives, and the lives of everyone 
who is near and dear to them. 




CHAPTER III 

women's ignorance of the value of 

MONEY 

TRUST that some of 
my readers will send 
me some account of 
the heated arguments 
which have resulted 
from my words being 
discussed, for there 
never was a man yet who has not " had it 
all out" with his wife hundreds and hun- 
dreds of times. Every woman, however, 
believes that her husband is the only unrea- 
sonable person in the world. One point in 
my writing and publishing this book is to 
show that the scandalous mismanagement of 
women is a general grievance. 

In the last chapter I spoke of the absolute 
incapacity of women to do their marketing 
23 



24 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
on anything like commercial and economical 
lines. I think I proved conclusively, to the 
minds of all men at least, that any business 
run on the same lines as a " home " is con- 
ducted, would result not only In bankruptcy, 
but in the manager being censured by the 
courts for hazardous speculation and reckless 
extravagance. 

I intend now to review the financial capa- 
bilities of the feminine gender. I have 
shown that women have no idea how to 
spend money. I shall now show they have 
no capabilities for saving money. This is 
the root of the whole evil, but it has many 
developments, as I shall show. The woman 
who asks her husband for " house-keeping 
money " simply obtains money under false 
pretences, for there is such a thing as crim- 
inal negligence. 

Is it in the experience of any man that, 
having given five dollars to his wife, he has 
ever seen an equivalent value for it? In the 
first place, is it ever possible to get a proper 
estimate for " the things " which are to be 
bought? A woman says she wants '"'' some " 



Ignorance of the Value of Money 25 

money. You ask her, how much ? She says, 
she can't tell exactly. Supposing you ask 
her to make out a list, and supposing you 
get it. Ask her how much it will all cost. 
She has not the least idea. Ask her how 
much each item costs. She cannot tell you. 
Anxious to get to your business, you say, 
" How much about will they be? " She says, 
about " $8.75 " and adds, " It may be a little 
under, and it may be a little over. In des- 
pair, you give her ten dollars. 

Intent on getting her into business habits, 
when you return, you ask her for the change, 
or perhaps you wait till she wants some 
more money. In the first instance, she says 
she remembered when she was out that she 
owed a little bill, and thought she had better 
pay it, or that the saucepans wanted renew- 
ing — oh, those saucepans ! — or she saw some 
very cheap window-blind muslin, or stock- 
ings for the children — oh, those children ! 

But did you ever see those saucepans, or 
those stockings ? I never did. 

In the second instance, she says, "the 
things " came to a little more than she an- 



26 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

ticipated. If you have kept, or can recall, the 
list, and try to get the price of each article 
out of her, she will get as far as accounting 
for $8.25 or $8.75, but farther than that she 
cannot remember. If you really want to get 
to the bottom of the whole business, you 
should say, "You must have lost the 
change." An accusation of losing money a 
woman always resents, with " The idea of 
such a thing ! " She next recollects that she 
bought herself a pair of gloves. If you sug- 
gest she bought gloves a week ago, or that 
she has her dress allowance, she says, " Of 
course, if you want me to walk about with- 
out gloves, you should say so." As your 
" saying so " would mean a row, you suggest 
that one dollar could not be better spent than 
on gloves, and you mark off your dollar like 
the iron cable in the English Admiralty re- 
port " Eaten by rats." 

But supposing your wife asks for five dol- 
lars, and, it not being convenient to give her 
more than $2.50, you again ask her for a list 
of the "things which are required for the 
house." If you get it, you will find that more 



Ignorance of the Value of Money 2^ 
than half the items are not pressing, and so 
you give her $2.50, and tell her she must 
make it go as far as she can. The next day 
she asks you for the other $2.50. To make a 
long story short, you will find that she has 
bought all the "things" which were not 




/ have lought enough Soap to stock the White House, 

pressing, and that she has left unpurchased 
all the things that were. Among the former 

are half a dozen boxes of S soap, and 

when you emphasize half a dozen, she says, 
" We cannot have the house without a bit 

of soap." Oh ! that S soap ! They give a 

coupon with each box, and for so many cou- 



28 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

pons they give the children a set of brown- 
paper toys. I live in a $400 a year house, 
and I have bought enough saucepans — what 
is the attraction about saucepans? — and 
S soap to stock the White House. 

It might be going a little too far to say 
women are absolutely dishonest about mon- 
ey; but it is not going a bit too far to say that 
they have no idea how hard it is to earn, that 
they have no idea of its value, that they can- 
not save it, that they have not the remotest 
notion how to spend it properly, and that, 
therefore, they should not be entrusted with 
either its saving or its spending. 

The real fact is, girls are not brought up 
either to have or to do without money. 
They cannot estimate the value of anything 
— not even their own clothes. They cannot 
keep accounts of money, and are really as 
much afraid of it as they are of a loaded 
pistol. It seems like a mere paradox to say 
women are afraid of money, but their acts 
suggest this, for their natural inclination 
seems to be to empty their purses, and a 
woman is never so happy as when she is 



Ignorance of the Value of Money 29 

spending money, not necessarily on articles 
she wants, or even on herself. She will buy 
anything, lend or give away any sum, as 
long as she can get rid of money. There are 
women who would not run into debt for 
worlds, who would not part with any of their 
possessions, but who will get anything for 
themselves, or give anything away to their 
acquaintances, so long as they can get rid of 
actual money which they have in their 
pockets; and nothing is so common as to 
hear a woman say : "I thought I might as 
well buy so-and-so, as I had the money in my 
pocket." 

Women are divided into two classes: the 
woman who never pays for necessaries, and 
the woman who never buys anything unless 
she can pay cash. From the financier's point 
of view, one system is as bad as the other. 
Women not only dissipate men's money, but 
they destroy their credit. I am talking, of 
course, of middle-class women, who marry 
middle-class men, who earn their living from 
week to week, month to month, or year to 
year. Every man of business is a man of 



30 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

credit. Tho, perhaps, only having $500 in 
his bank, his bills for $5,000 running over 
three, six, nine, and twelve months, are read- 
ily accepted and handed on as cash. In 
France, this system prevails even in the 
home. Owing to the fantastic finance of 
women, no such thing exists here, and the re- 
sult is, a man has to keep money for " weekly 




books," which would be much better em- 
ployed in his business. The result is long 
credit and ruinous prices with shopkeepers, 
or a constant drain of ready money to the 
detriment of credit. Women will not un- 
derstand this. I will explain. 

When I was a bachelor, I seldom or never 



Ignorance of the Value of Money 3 ^ 
paid cash. If I wanted clothes, or even wine 
or cigars, I sent out and ordered them. 
When the bill came in, I always paid some- 
thing "on account." The result was, my 
credit was excellent; that is to say, my 
tradesmen always trusted me, and said of 
me, " He always pays " ; and, besides this, I 
was never without money in my pocket, and 
if I were a bit short, nobody was frightened. 
Since then I have married. My wife has al- 
ways insisted on paying her weekly bills 
regularly on Saturday. She said it was 
" her way." She considered it disreputable 
to run bills, and said that if she sent a check 
on account, people would think we could not 
pay, and would not trust us, and, worse than 
all, " would talk." So far, it has not mat- 
tered. But, supposing I suddenly wanted all 
the money I could lay hands on for a busi- 
ness speculation. Do you suppose for one 
moment that my wife's twenty years of pay- 
ing the bills weekly would give us a 
fortnight's credit for a box of matches, or 
that our tradesmen would accept such a new 
departure as a small check on account? I 



32 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

say emphatically, " No," Having been paid 
weekly, they would immediately suspect that 
I was " broke," and, as sure as my name is 
what it is, I should receive a dozen or so 
District Court summonses. 

Thanks, therefore, to my wife's system of 
maintaining our good name, we are not 
worth three months' credit, and my name 
might just as well as not have made a weekly 
appearance in the Commercial reports. The 
result is, that, whereas " my ofEce " has the 
reputation of being good for hundreds, " my 
house," which is managed by my partner, is 
not good for a fifty-dollar note. A further 
result is, that if I did not keep fifty dollars a 
month out of my business, I might find I 
could not get a bit to eat, and would be " the 
talk " of an entire suburb. 

It must be clear, therefore, that, since this 
absurd system of paying " ready money," 
and getting no discount, pervades the entire 
ranks of the middle-class, women are not 
only conniving at the robbery of their hus- 
bands, but are ruining their credit. I have 
already shown that no woman ever gets 



Ignorance of the Value of Money 33 
a discount for ready money. It may be said 
that they do not know that they could. It 
would require very little common sense for 
them to find it out. They must know — they 
do know ! — that their cooks get it on every- 
thing that goes into the kitchen, and that 
their nurses get it for the very milk that goes 
into their nurseries. If they only looked at 
their dressmaker's bills, they would see " A 
discount of 5 per cent, allowed for cash," 
stated in red letters. Yet it is to people who 
cannot put two and two together, who can 
not keep money, who do not know how to 
spend money, who keep no record of what 
they receive, and have no knowledge of what 
anything should, or has, cost, to whom we 
entrust the finances of our homes. Are we 
not bigger fools, and more to blame, than 
they are ? 




CHAPTER IV 

THE MANAGEMENT OF SERVANTS 

Y one idea in this 
book is to be 
strictly fair to 
women, and not, 
as so many other 
writers have done, 
to attack them 
unfairly on sub- 
jects of vanity, 
dress, extravag- 
ance, or any of 
the other well- 
worn topics. To 
have followed in the lines of my prede- 
cessors would, to my mind, have been 
to prove my own weakness, for we can- 
not change a woman's nature any more 
than we can man's and, therefore, to at- 
34 




The Management of Servants 35 

tack women because they are fickle or 
vain-glorious seems to me as absurd as 
to attempt to prove that man is not the 
superior animal because he is, by instinct, 
fond of cakes and ale. Really, I do not want 
to attack at all, because it is as natural to me 
to be fond of women as it is for children to 
be fond of toys. My real idea is to give wom- 
en an opportunity for defense, and to prove 
their strength. It is for this reason that I 
attack them where they elect to be considered 
strongest, namely, in their homes. The cry 
of late years is that women are as good as 
men, that they have been persecuted and kept 
under for years, and that, therefore, they 
should not be expected, in the first years of 
their emancipation, to be up to competing 
with men as bread-winners. That is quite 
reasonable, and, therefore, I do not gird at 
their mismanagement of the political and 
commercial sides of life. 

But the management of the house they 
have always had, and, as I have said, there 
they fail sadly either to provide comfort, or 
to spend money in the proper way. 



36 The 'Domestic Blunders of Women 

I have, so far, shown that the discomforts 
and extravagances of home are largely due 
to woman's incapacity to buy in the best 
markets, and their inability to handle money 
to the best advantage. I am bound to admit 




Tke serpen f on the hearth. 

that another great factor in home discomfort 
is the servants. Nearly all controversies hint 
at servants being the difficulty, and, needless 
to say, if I knew my subject at all, I was 
bound to face the servant question. I will 



The Management of Servants 37 
face it, but I fear that, so far from the cause 
of woman benefiting by the inquiry, I shall 
hereby prove my allegations against women 
more conclusively than I have so far done. 

Woman's mission is to always put the 
blame on someone else. Eve began it. She 
put the blame on the serpent, and her 
daughters have ever since blamed the serpent 
on the hearth — the servant. Do not run 
away with any idea that I am going, for 
mere love of paradox, to champion servants. 
A French writer has said, " So many serv- 
ants, so many spies," and, in my mind, 
servants are many things worse than spies. 
But let servants be, as they are, woman's ex- 
cuse for everything that goes wrong, just as 
servants put everything on the cat. I accept 
the gage. For the purposes of argument, we 
will admit that servants are at the bottom of 
all the evils of home life. Now let us inquire 
into that. The first question to ask the 
woman in the box, who is giving evidence 
for the defense, is : 

" Who engages the servants ? " 

The answer is " I do." The witness, be it 



38 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
understood, is speaking on behalf of women 
generally. The next question is : 
" Who directs the servants ? " 




" Who engages the servants ? " 

The answer is the same, " I do." Pursu- 
ing this line, I ask the mistress : 

" From whom do your servants learn their 
business?" 



The Management of Servants 39 

" From me ! " 

"And anything they don't know, I may 
take it, is due to the fact that former mis- 
tresses have not taught, or have failed to 
teach, them ? " 

" That is so." 

" You have heard the expression, * Like 
master, like man,' have you not? " 

"I have!" 

"Have husbands nothing to do with 
teaching servants their business ? " 

"Certainly not!" 

" What is the proportion of women-serv- 
ants in a house where two men-servants are 
kept?" 

" Five or six." 

"And when the servants are all of one 
sex, to which sex do they belong? " 

" Generally to the female sex. " 

" Then the proportion of women-servants 
over men-servants is very large ? " 

" It is." 

" Then, if the entire education, engaging, 
paying, managing and discharging of ser- 
vants is carried on by women, and if the pro- 



40 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

portion of women over men-servants is very- 
large, the entire blame for the unsatisfactory 
state of the servant question must be due to 
women?" 

The witness does not answer, and, on be- 
ing pressed, bursts into tears, and finally 
says: 

" It is all the fault of the men ! " 

I have put this point in the shape of a dia- 
logue, because it is, perhaps, a little shorter 
and easier to understand. It all amounts to 
the old saying : " Qui facit per alium, facit 
per se! " 

Men, as a rule, have nothing to do with 
servants, the larger proportion of servants 
are women, and, therefore, the faults of ser- 
vants is only another proof that women are 
incapable of managing another very large 
section of a necessity which should go to 
make comfort and economy in the home. 
But perhaps it is not fair to judge entirely by 
majorities. Let us look at the exception, 
which again proves the rule. Bachelors keep 
their servants, men or women, for years, and, 



The Management of Servants 4 1 
with a few exceptions, always speak of them 
as treasures. Why is this ? 

Ask any servant who applies to you for a 
situation why he or she left his or her last 
place. The almost invariable answer is : "I 
could not get on with the mistress." Ask 
why any gentleman's gentleman, or my 
lady's maid, left his or her other place, and 




In one of her tantrums. 

the answers are always, " The missus, the 
missus, the missus." As a rule, when a ser- 
vant gives notice, and is asked by his master 
why he wishes to leave, the answer is : " I 
can't satisfy my mistress, sir," or " I can't 
get on with the cook." Servants very 
seldom complain that they cannot get on 



42 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

with "the master." It is always "the 
missus." Again I ask — why is this ? 

The most unsatisfactory and sulky female 
servant will always smile and do anything 
cheerfully for her master, or the young gen- 
tlemen of the house, and when she is in one 
of her tantrums, it is, in nine cases out of ten, 
because she cannot get on with the missus, 
or the young ladies, or the other female ser- 
vants — for the complaint of servants is al- 
ways against what they call " She." (" She " 
is the terror of the servant of either sex, 
and where there is dissension downstairs, 
the female servant is always at the bottom of 
it. Does not all this show that mistresses 
cannot manage servants, and that female 
servants cannot manage one another? 

The servants of a house cost as much, as a 
rule, as the rent and taxes, and yet they 
never give satisfaction, and are never satis- 
fied. Why is this ? I could easily find fifty 
reasons to account for it. The mistress who 
overworks, the mistress who underworks, 
the mistress who is unkind, the mistress who 
is too kind, the mistress who is too strict, the 



The Management of Servants 43 

mistress who is not strict enough, the mis- 
tress who makes favorites, etc., etc., would 
all prove fruitful subjects to enlarge upon, 
were they not too obvious. The remarkable 
thing about the whole question is, that 




TAe mispress who is overkifid. 

the money will secure you everything on 
the earth, no amount of wages will induce 
servants, as a rule, to stop long in a place. It 
is a mistake to imagine that servants are in- 
dependent and love to roam. As a matter 
of fact, they are terrified to leave, because 



44 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

they never know what character a spiteful 
mistress may give them, and one bad char- 
acter means the street. It is the haunting 
fear of this which makes them, if possible, 
give notice, before they receive it, for this 
is their only protection. Is it natural to sup- 
pose that any friendless, and homeless, and 
moneyless creature willingly leaves a good 
roof, good food, and good wages, to run the 
chance of meeting a worse mistress? The 
thing is absurd, for the motto of servants is 
the not very lofty one of Gervaise : 

" To have enough to eat and drink, to 
work all their lives, to die in their beds, and 
be buried decently." 

When I was a little fellow, I heard a ser- 
vant say that the fate of a servant was : 

" To work while you are young, to beg 
when you are old, and to go to the devil 
when you die." 

I have never forgotten it. 

There is very much to be said on the sub- 
ject of mistresses and servants — very much 
more than I have either space or patience for, 
and there would be very little use in saying 



The Management of Servants 45 

it if I had, as it seems all very obvious when 
you come to think of it, which women appar- 
ently never do. But this fact remains. We 
are as much indebted to servants for the 
comforts of home life as we are to our wives 
and daughters. The only difference between 
the two classes is that some of us are allowed 
to try and manage our wives and daughters, 
and some of us succeed, but none of us are 
ever allowed " to interfere with the ser- 
vants "; all wives and daughters mismanage 
them, to our sore discomfort and their own; 
another thing is that we can get rid of our 
servants, but not of our wives and daughters, 
who, I candidly believe, are really the most 
to blame, tho, poor souls, I do believe most 
of them try. 

The fact remains however, that women 
arrogate to themselves the management of 
servants, and prove their incapacity for the 
task by the deplorable state of the servant 
market. Men manage shop-girls, waitresses, 
factory girls, and all sorts of women engaged 
in their businesses; but men cannot stop at 
home to manage servants, and if they could, 



4^ The Domestic Blunders of Women 

they could not prevent their wives and 
daughters from interfering. The question 
is : What is to be done so that we may live 
in peace when our day's work is done? 

It looks like an im,passe, but it is not. 
The larger proportion of servants are 
women, therefore it is women we have to 
deal with. The real remedy is to promptly 
sack all your women-servants, and engage 
men only. Men-servants will cook, make 
beds, sweep, and wait at table. Why should 
they not do so for families? They do it in 
hotels, especially in France, in restaurants, 
and in the army. Women apparently can- 
not, or will not, learn, and women appear to 
be unable to teach them. Men can teach 
themselves to cook in a very short time, and 
all the rest is child's play. Yes, the solution 
of the servant question is to get rid of your 
women-servants, engage men, and make 
them entirely answerable to yourselves. 
Men-servants will cost a little more, but one 
man can do two women's work. Chinamen 
make capital servants; so do Hindoos. Why 
not Europeans or Americans? Ask any 



The Management of Servants 47 
Anglo-Indian or his wife what is the one 
cause of discord in the otherwise happy 
home, surrounded and served by men, and 
you will be told that there never was any 
trouble, except with the ayah. If you ask 
them what is an ayah, they will tell you an 
ayah is the one woman-servant in an Indian 
house, and that she is not an angel. 




Why not a European or an American. 



CHAPTER V 



It will be in the minds of all my readers that 
I opened up the question of Servants and 
Mistresses by showing that, whatever faults 
servants have, women are responsible for 
them. That, I admit, was an impeachment 
of " The Missus." I admitted, however, 
that servants were far from blameless. I 
shall endeavor to develop this side of the 
question, and point out some further faults 
of the servant system, and suggest some 
remedies. 

I showed that servants are what their mis- 
tresses make them. Let us see why mistresses 
make bad servants. To do this, we must 
get back to the purely business side of life. 
Here women are again at fault. In every 
business in the world which is managed by 
men, and where novices are employed, they 
are taken as apprentices and are taught their 
.48 



The Mistakes of " The Missus " 49 
trade. It is owing to the lax way in which 
women do their work that all servants are 
more or less amateurs, in the sense that they 
are incompetent, or, at least, not qualified. 
I do not suppose that there is a single ser- 
vant in your employ, fair reader, who could 
tell you how she acquired the rudiments, to 
say nothing of the iinesse, of her trade. If 
she comes to you as a cook, you will find 
that, in nine cases out of ten, she commenced 
as a kitchen-maid, and has only picked up 
cooking, as Pope says the apothecaries learn 
medicine, from making up prescriptions, and 
by experimenting on her unfortunate em- 
ployers. It is just the same with maids and 
housemaids and housekeepers and the gen- 
erality of nurses. Nobody but a woman 
would set about earning a living in such a 
way, and nobody but a woman would ever 
give her a chance. In this, as in most other 
things, you see the unsuitability of women 
to manage the little corners of the world 
which they are pleased to call their " own do- 
main. " How is it possible for mistresses 
who have never learnt to manage a house or 



50 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
to distribute money to the greatest advan- 
tage, and servants who have never really 
learned their duties, to get on together or to 
cater for the comforts of man ? 

The result is, almost invariably, the dis- 
aster which follows the blind leading, or 
driving, the blind. It may be said that I am 
not quite fair in judging mistresses entirely 
from the point of view of professional men. 
Let me, therefore, take another example, 
which is rather of the accidental order of 
profession, and has to do with the lighter 
side of life. Take a man whom fortune, or 
misfortune, makes a theatrical manager. To 
be successful he must acquire a knowledge 
of many things. He has to learn something 
of literature, something of music, something 
of painting, something of dresses, something 
of carpentry, mechanics, finance, acting, and 
many other things, and not only learn them 
in a general way, but must know exactly 
how much every little item costs, the price of 
canvas, nails, wood, glue, needles, silk, print- 
ing, etc., etc. That all managers know all 
these things I am not prepared to admit, but 



The Mistakes of " The Missus " 5 1 

it is quite dear that the man who does not 
know them invariably fails in the long run, 
even though he is prepared to employ people 
who do. I mention this because many 




The blind leading the blind. 

women attribute the success of masters, not 
to their business ability, but to their ability to 
employ good servants. 

This is only an illustration. Let us get 
back to the subject itself. Why do women 



52 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

fail as employers of labor? First, be- 
cause they do not know; secondly, because 
they are too lazy to learn. Women have suc- 
ceeded, of course, but only where they are 
thrown on their own resources. As long as 




Why do women fail. 

men are content to become, so to speak, 
merely " backers," that is to say, people who 
provide money to keep up a fad which they 
call " Home," so long will women let things 
drift along without taking the trouble to 
make " Home " a good investment. By this 



The Mistakes of " The Missus " 53 

I am forced to explain that I do not mean a 
good investment from the point of absolutely- 
increasing the revenue, but a good invest- 
ment from the same point of view that a 
grouse-moor, or a piece of good fishing, may 
be a good investment, namely, something 
that provides a certain amount of pleasure 
and relaxation. You may pay $400 for a 
billiard table, and never make anything out 
of it. But if it is a good billiard table you 
may get a large amount of amusement out 
of it, and so regard it as a very good invest- 
ment. 

The absolute chaotic state of the servant 
question is due to generations of women who 
have let things slide. The sooner they re- 
turn to first principles the better. What are 
these principles? Go and see how your 
father, your brother, or your husband man- 
ages his business. You will find that it is on 
precisely the same principles that men have 
managed their business for generations. 
Why is domestic service the only profession 
or trade in the world which is overstocked 
and detested ? Simply because it is the only 



54 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
one over which women preside, and the only- 
one which is villainously mismanaged, to the 
disadvantage of the mistress and the servant 
alike. The cause for this is not far to seek. 
Domestic service is the only labor in the 
world where the duties and obligations of the 
employee and employer are not definitely 
defined. The result is constant friction. 

There is but one remedy. There should 
be the written or printed agreement, which 
exists in all other paths of business, between 
the mistress and the servant. I suppose that 
the first thing I shall be told is that no ser- 
vant would sign such an agreement. With 
all respect, I join issue with this statement. 
If the agreement were not entirely one-sided, 
every servant in the world would be only too 
ready to sign it and abide by it. This is 
proved by the fact that, wherever a union of 
men or women is formed, the first demand is 
for definite rules and a definite agreement. 
An agreement, if properly drawn up, would 
be for mutual protection. It would shield the 
servant from being imposed upon, and from 
being thrown out at the mere whim of a 



The Mistakes of " The Missus " 55 

mistress in the tantrums. It would secure 
for the mistress that the work of her house 
was properly done, and protection from the 
neglect and destruction of her property. The 
present lax system breeds nothing but mis- 
trust rather than confidence. This, as every- 
one must agree, is the root of dissension. As 
matters are at present managed, no servant 
knows exactly what her work is, and she 
never has any idea that good conduct and 
faithful service will result in any reward but 
the kick-out when she is getting to that age 
when it is not very easy to find a place. 

If I were managing a house, and about to 
engage servants, I would require each per- 
son whom I employed to sign an agreement. 
In this document, of which the servant 
should have a counterpart, signed by myself, 
it would be set forth that, in the case of, say, a 
house-maid, she should properly clean, every 
day between the hours of so-and-so, certain 
rooms which would be allotted to her, and 
for which she would be responsible, and per- 
form such other work as was reasonable and 
was agreed upon. I should also furnish 



5^ The Domestic Blunders of Women 

each servant with an inventory of such prop- 
erty as was in her charge, and when any 
article was broken or missing I should re- 
quire her to report the matter at once, and, if 
the amount of damage was over and above a 
certain percentage of fair wear and tear, I 
should possess the right to deduct so much 




Supposing that your cook got tipsy. 

from her wages. On my side, I should 
pledge myself to employ, and pay her a cer- 
tain wage for a certain time, the said wage 
to increase after certain dates if still in my 
employ. I should further insist on my right 
to mark her character with such offenses as 



The Mistakes of " The Missus " 57 
she might be guilty of from time to time, but 
which should be considered as atoned for 
after a certain period of good conduct, and 
I would pledge myself to substitute for that 
agreement a character which would cor- 
respond with the marking of the agreement 
at such time as she left my service. For in- 
stance, supposing that a cook got typsy. If 
she were a good servant, I should be inclined 
to look over the matter the first time, but I 
should insist on marking the agreement. 
This she would naturally agree to, as it 
would be to her interest to live down her of- 
fense by remaining sober for a year, at which 
time her sin would be considered as purged, 
and, if she chose to leave then, I should be 
bound to give her a character saying she had 
been in my service a year, that she was a 
good cook, and was clean, economical, hon- 
est and habitually sober. 

Besides this, I should take stock every six 
months. This is usual in all businesses, and 
it is eminently desirable in the management 
of a house. Every mistress knows that when 
anything is missing it is said to have been 



5^' The Domestic Blunders of Women 
broken " a long time ago," and, unless some 
servant has left, it is impossible to discover 
who was the delinquent, more especially as 
nobody is responsible. Another thing which 




There is nothing in the kitchen. 

is in the experience of all housewives is that 
there is such a thing as wilful destruction, or 
what appears to be remarkably like it. The 
knowledge of this only comes when you en- 
gage a new servant. The morning after her 
arrival she invariably reports, if she is a 



The Mistakes of " The Missus " 59 
cook, that " there is nothing in the kitchen," 
and pots and pans, and everything apper- 
taining to kitchen utensils, have to be re- 
placed. If it is a housemaid, she demon- 
strates that there are no brushes, that the 
handle of the dust-pan is broken, that all the 
blacking is used up, and the dusters are a 
mass of holes. If it is a parlor-maid, there 
are no cups, tumblers, or glass-cloths, and 
she says she finds all the table-cloths and 
napkins are in a very bad way. Whenever 
this happens, the mistress always says the 
last servant " has stolen the things." How 
true this may be I do not know, but the 
knowledge comes too late. I have often 
heard my wife declare that the wilful damage 
in our house comes to quite $ioo a year, 
and many of her friends aver that this is a 
very small average. 

I do not depart from my original state- 
ment that the real fault of all the discomfort 
and extravagance of " Home " life is due to 
" the Missus," but I hope I have shown that 
my eyes are quite open to the servant's share 
in it. Servants, however, I think, cannot be 



6o The Domestic Blunders of Women 

expected to take much pride where they have 
no responsibihty, and no reward for looking 
after interests which are not their own. A 
system which exists in no other branch of 
life, and which is eminently unsatisfactory 
where it flourishes, must be in need of some 
remedy. I make the suggestion modestly, 
but I am deeply interested in its reception, 
and I trust mistresses and servants alike will 
give it consideration. That things are in a 
yery bad state nobody can deny. The ques- 
tion is, can we arrive at a solution? 








CHAPTER VI 

THE HIGHLY RESPECTABLE PERSON 

HILE these 
chapters 
were ap- 
pearing in 
serial form 

I received a large number of letters, some of 
which will be found in this book. Among 
these is one which I feel I must mention, as it 
has made me pause and consider carefully 
whether I should continue this series, or 
drop the whole subject, and let the world 
continue in the same haphazard way that 
women have reduced it to. The letter runs 
as follows : 

" I wish when you wrote that article about 
women that you (sic), someone, had stran- 
6i 



62 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

gled you; you have made my life a burden to 
me (through my husband), what with your 
harness and your bran-mash, etc., and your 
mutton chops, and so on. There are no 
words in the English language bad enough 
that I could throw at you; please close your 
series at once, as they won't do good at all, 
and are only making strife in once peaceful 
homes." 

This is signed " An Angry Wife," and I 
spare my readers the " P. S." It would be 
easy to sneer at this blotted and illiterate 
letter; but I am not so hard-hearted as some 
of my readers may imagine, and I can see 
that this badly-written letter is stained with 
tears. There is even a pathos for me in the 
vulgarity of the postscript, and I am deeply 
sorry if any words of mine have led some 
foolish man to apply them too near home for 
his own and his wife's comfort. My mission 
is not to make discord, but to preach peace. 
I want to show women where they fail, so 
that they may mend their manners, and, if 
they will only take heed, and their husbands 



The Highly Respectable Person 63 

will only be a little patient with them, though 
there may be little storms, I am sure the 
sunshine will succeed. 

With these few words, and in this hope, I 
continue, and I take for my subject women's 
idea of a good servant, or, at least, their idea 




SAe will not die. 

of a servant they ought to put up with. She 
is common to all homes, and I am sure all 
my readers will recognize her under the title 
of " Such a highly respectable person ! " 

Was it Sidney Smith — or was it Charles 
Lamb? — ^who said there were three sexes — 
men, women, and parsons ? It is I who say 



64 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
that "the highly respectable person" is a 
distinct breed of biped, which Hobb would 
have gloried in. She is common to all na- 
tions. She is a cross between a chameleon 
and Proteus. She is sometimes English, 
sometimes Scotch, sometimes Irish, and 
sometimes American; but she is not human, 
for she has no vices, and she apparently was 
never born, for nobody ever knew "the 
highly respectable person " when she was 
young. She came ( from where it would not 
be polite to say) into the world when she was 
middle-aged, and, like H. S. Leigh's famous 
parrot, 

" She'd look beautiful if stuffed. 
And knows it, but she will not die." 

As I have said, "the highly respectable 
person" is possessed of all the virtues. 
Among these, she is " very willing." If she 
is employed as nurse, and the cook gets tem- 
porarily indisposed, she does not mind going 
into the kitchen, and doing her best, and you 
can always rely upon having a dinner served 
an hour late, which is either half or three 
times too much cooked. She cheerfully 



The Highly Respectable Person 6$ 

washes up such of the dishes and plates as 
she has not broken, and cleans those knives 
that scalding water has left handles on. At 
the end of her week's reign in the lower 
regions, you discover that the boiler is 
burned through, and the sink is stopped up. 
If she comes to you as cook, when you are 
short-handed, she does not mind doing her 
best upstairs; she never forgets to mend any 
china which "comes apart " in her hand, and 
you can always tell, by the smell and the 
stains, that she has not forgotten to fill the 
lamps. 

She is a very tidy person. She always 
carefully puts away anything you want, and 
you see, by the way your papers are turned 
over, that your desk has been thoroughly 
dusted — round the edges. And she is handy 
withal. If the chair is broken, you will not 
find it out at once, as she will make it hold 
together — till you sit down — ^by tying it 
with string, or driving a tenpenny nail 
through the back, which is "so brittle and 
old " that it splits. If she has any washing 
to do, she makes no fuss about it. She waits 



66 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

till you are out, and does it in the bath-room, 
and when the waste won't act, and the 
plumber comes and pulls up half the floor, 
and the force-pipe smothers the ceiling with 
semi-decayed soap and dirt, you can satisfy 
yourself that the mischief was as much due 
to the fluff and hair which somebody put in 
the bath as the fact that " the highly respect- 
able person " forgot that hot water will melt 
a bar of soap in time if allowed to stand. 

But this is only indoors. If a slate is 
blown off the house, " the highly respectable 
person " will clamber up through the trap- 
door, and march about without fear of slip- 
ping with her thick boots on the roof, and 
when she comes down you will know ex- 
actly how many slates are broken. If you 
send her to the butcher's, you may be sure 
she will pick the meat she thinks is best for 
you, and if you happen not to like it as much 
as usual, you will at least know that she did 
her best in your interests, by finding that she 
has saved you a quarter. If her mistress 
wants a certain kind of stuff, and sends her 
for it, she will never come back empty- 



The Highly Respectable Person 67 

handed. If the storekeeper has not the right 
material or color, she will bring back the 
next best thing to it, and if you are so partic- 
ular as to object to mixing satin and silk, or 
pink and magenta, why, the shopkeeper will 
generally allow you to " take it out " in 
something he has got, and you don't want, 
say, in six dozen of glass cloths, or some- 
thing useful, which are sure to come in 
handy in a year or two. 

But what " the highly respectable person " 
is most careful of, is " Master's things." 
She always knows where his socks can be 
bought cheaper than he can buy them for 
himself, and she has endless suggestions as 
to what to do with his clothes, or ties and 
scarfs, which he so foolishly treasures 
above much newer fashions and colors 
which can be picked up at sales. 

It is needless to say that such a clever, use- 
ful person, who is so careful of the interests 
of her master and mistress, is not adored by 
the other servants. They of course, not be- 
ing " highly respectable persons," have to be 
carefully watched. Their letters have to be 



68 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

carefully scrutinized, and, if possible, read. 
Their conversations at the kitchen door with 
the milkman, or baker, and at the hall door 
with the postman, are duly noted; their man- 




At the door with the milkman noted. 

ner of addressing one another, and any words 
which they may drop have a terrible signifi- 
cance when reported at appropriate moments, 
and, that they are very foolish persons, is 



The Highly Respectable Person 6g 
proved by their objecting to be interfered 
with on every point, and by allowing them- 
selves to be exasperated into telling " the 
highly respectable person " to mind her own 
business. That such a state of open revolt 
should be allowed to continue is, of course, 
impossible. Having awakened to the fact 
that " the highly respectable person " is 
trusted and honored in the eyes of her 
nominal mistress, the rest of the servants, 
fearing a month's notice and a bad character, 
take the unfair advantage of protecting 
themselves, and give warning. It is thus 
that " the highly respectable person " pre- 
vents her master and mistress from being 
served by bad servants, for everyone must 
admit that it is much better not to be served 
at all, than by bad servants. 

But the greatest of all the qualities of 
" the highly respectable person " is the fact 
that she is a dragon of virtue. She has no 
followers that anybody ever saw or heard of. 
Nobody calls and asks to see her; she re- 
ceives no letters that are not in an unmistak- 
able feminine hand; nobody hangs about the 



70 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

gate and whistles, and nobody has ever been 
seen to raise his hat to her, look after her, or 
pass her the time of day, in going by. Per- 
haps, however, an even greater quality is 
that she wants no Sundays or week-days out, 
except to go to church, and, altho she is 
strictly religious, she sets her duty above all 
things, and never demands her right when 
she thinks it would be in any way incon- 
venient to her mistress. 

Her mission in life is to stick to her mis- 
tress as long as her mistress will stick to her. 
To do this thoroughly, she has to read her 
mistress's letters, and woe betide the mistress 
who, not being all that she might be, at- 
tempts to part with " the highly respectable 
person," for "the highly respectable per- 
son " is as solicitous of the welfare of her 
mistress as she is of her fellow-servants. To 
attain this end, she is careful to keep her mis- 
tress up to her mark. In the present deplor- 
able state to which generations of women 
have brought the Servant Market, the mis- 
tress is bound, if not to shut her eyes, at any 
rate, not to look too closely for faults. But 



The Highly Respectable Person Jl 

this laxity does not suit " the highly respect- 
able person." Her motto is, " Whom the 
Lord loveth He chasteneth," and " the high- 
ly respectable person" has aggregated to 




She has to read her mistress's letters. 



herself the role of social blister. She tells 
her mistress all she does not wish to know, 
but, knowing, must notice. She instructs 
her when the sieves were not scalded, when 



J 2 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
the pots are not cleaned, when the bread-pan 
has been allowed to grow over-full, where 
half a pound of butter has been put away and 
forgotten, and she leads her round the house 
to point out where the dusting has been 
scamped, and turns up the rugs and carpets 
where yesterday's dust has been hastily hid- 
den. In this way she fans her mistress into 
perpetual warfare with her servants, and 
poses, with virtuous pride, as " a highly re- 
spectable person " is entitled to pose, as be- 
ing careful of the welfare and rectitude of 
her fellow-creatures. 

Men, who are unreasonable, and know 
nothing of what is good for them, as op- 
posed to the luxury of peace and quiet, are 
no respecters of servants who are " highly 
respectable," and act as firebrands. They 
advocate the casting out of the one " highly 
respectable person," and the keeping of the 
majority, who are merely human beings, 
who have " followers," and who want to go 
out regularly, as they are entitled to do, and 
they care little how servants behave when 
they are away from home. These are the 



The Highly Respectable Person 73 
lines upon which men conduct their business- 
es, and this is possibly why their managers, 
their clerks, and other employees remain for 
years in their service and work together in 
harmony. Women are always crying out 
against their servants. Does any lady or 
gentleman want a " highly respectable per- 
son " with all the above advantages ? I 
know one, at least, whom I shall be only too 
pleased to recommend to any master or mis- 
tress who has not experienced such a luxury, 
and I promise to ask no questions. If my 
readers know of any more, I shall be glad if 
they will write. Don't all speak at once. 




Don^t all speak at once. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE DOMESTIC INFERNO 

S the nursery upstairs 
is generally admitted 
to be the heaven of our 
homes, so the kitchen 
ably takes up the posi- 
tion of— the other 
place. It is there that 
all the mischief of the 
house is hatched, and 
I must say I think the 
mistress of the house is 
largely responsible for 
its sins. On the few 
occasions when a man 
visits it (for instance, when he comes back 
late, and finds the servants have forgotten 
to lay any bread, or the fire has gone out, 
and some sticks are wanted), he is, as a rule, 
absolutely appalled at its dirt and disorder. 
74 




The Domestic Inferno 75 

It is true that the stove may be bright, and 
that the dresser may look very clean with its 
rows of plates, but if he has to look deeper, 
what a perfect rag-and-bone shop the whole 
place is! Only let him peep into the cup- 
boards, only let him open the drawer of the 
kitchen table, or the dresser, and he will be 
perfectly horrified to find that his wife allows 
such a mass of heterogeneous matter to be 
collected. I will spare my readers a picture 
of it — let them go and see for themselves. 
There is only one question I should like to 
have answered, and that is : Why is it that 
the drawers in a dresser never have any 
handles? I am not merely trying to pro- 
vide the followers of Vilon with a refrain 
for a ballade. I ask in the interest of our 
best knives, our forks, and skewers, that 
break and twist themselves out of all shape 
in their efforts to open the drawers of 
dressers. 

I do not think I am overstating it 
when I say that if wives would only keep 
handles on the drawers of their dresser, they 
would save their husbands fifty dollars a 



76 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

year, which, during twenty years of married 
life, amounts to $1000. 

This brings me to the appalling misuse 
which all the articles in the kitchen are put 
to. Every trade has its list of necessary 
tools, and everyone knows that there is not 
a mechanic in the world who requires to be 
so fully supplied with plant as a cook, and 
that there is no skilled workman who puts it 
to such bad use. With a trowel and a mor- 
tar-board, a bricklayer will build a house — 
indeed, several houses; with a few chisels 
and a hammer, a stonemason will decorate 
the side of a cathedral, and perhaps the car- 
penter is the only skilled laborer who re- 
quires anything like so much plant as a cook. 
She is never happy, and always ready with a 
string of excuses, till she is provided with a 
whole houseful of things, which she declares 
are absolutely essential to the cooking of ex- 
ceedingly plain fare. 

She must have rows of saucepans, rang- 
ing from the very biggest to the very small- 
est, and everything else in proportion, and 
as soon as she is provided with them, her 



The Domestic Inferno 77 

fancy settles upon particular saucepans and 
pans, which she keeps in constant use till 
they are destroyed. Every man knows that 
five pairs of boots or five suits of clothes will 
last longer by being worn alternately than 
by being hacked out separately; but the mis- 
tress never insists upon this system being ap- 
plied to kitchen utensils. No cook will be 



rrri 




•VI 



happy till she is provided with a meat 
chopper and a meat saw, but when she has 
got them, she prefers to use the best carvers. 
Whoever heard of a carpenter turning 
screws with his chisel, or using his pincers 
to drive nails with ? 

This will probably send my strong-minded 
readers into hysterics, but can they deny that 
cooks persistently use one spot in a sieve till 
they have rubbed a hole in it, and that gener- 
ally a cook will devote the first thing which 
comes to her hand to a use for which it was 



78 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

never intended, and that this system leads 
to great damage? If they do, I should like 
to ask them to account for the number of 
knives which are broken, and to ask them if 
they ever in their lives saw a knife broken by 
proper use in the dining-room ? It stands to 
reason, first, that I cannot go through the 
misuses which every article in the kitchen is 
put to — such should not be necessary, and is 
certainly impossible in the space which I 
mean this book to occupy; and secondly, 
that as " A Mere Man," away all day at my 
business, I could not possibly be expected 
to know; but most sensible women must 
admit, if they think over it carefully, that 
the annual renewals of a kitchen are out of 
all proportion. 

This being so, how should it be dealt 
with ? Well, most men of business set aside 
a certain amount of their incomes for what 
we call, on our balance-sheets, depreciation 
of plant. I wonder how many women there 
are who make any such provision in their 
own particular business. Home? I wonder 
if there is one single one who is long-headed 



The Domestic Inferno 79 

enough to have ever thought of such a thing, 
and I wonder how many there are who have 
ever dreamed of a yearly or half-yearly 
" stock-taking " ? 

Do you know, my fair readers, that yours 
is the only business in the world which is not 
conducted on these principles, and do you 
know that yours are the only servants in the 
world who object to be charged with de- 
ficiencies over and above a certain reasonable 
amount ? Do you know that where servants 
are employed in similar pursuits by men — I 
refer more particularly now to waiters and 
barmaids, etc. — that there is such a thing 
as a breakage fund, to which all subscribe 
willingly, and that any surplus is devoted to 
the benefit of all concerned? Now, do you 
not think it would be well if you established 
such a system? Do you not think it would 
make your servants more careful, and you 
much richer? I am sure you do, and, this 
being so, I counsel all housekeepers to put it 
in practice. 

But I must get on to even a more impor- 
tant subject of waste than this. There is. 



8o The Domestic Blunders of Women 

perhaps no more serious expense in a house- 
hold than coal. It behoves you to be most 
careful of its consumption. To do you jus- 
tice, in many ways you are. You will regu- 
late exactly the amount of coal you use 
upstairs. You put off having fires for your 
own comfort as long as you can, and you 
economize by persuading your family to 
make one fire do for as many as possible. 
This shows you are not blind to the ter- 
rible expense of coal. But I fear me that, 
while you are sparing at one end, you are 
spending at the other. 

But there are ways to save coal; that is to 
say, there is a way to prevent it being wasted. 
In most middle-class houses, the kitchen has 
to provide breakfast, middle-day dinner or 
luncheon, a cup of tea at five o'clock, and 
dinner. To do this, it is necessary, ac- 
cording to the cook, to keep up a roaring 
furnace, that would roast an ox or melt 
enough iron to make a good-sized gun, from 
half-past six in the morning to close on ten 
o'clock at night — fifteen and a-half hours. 
There is no good in going into any elaborate 



The Domestic Inferno 8 1 

explanations as to how to avoid this. 
Everybody knows as well as I do — but no 




Look at your bill for coal. 

woman takes the trouble to see that the cook 
really slacks down her fire. Of course. 



82 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

everybody will jump to the front, and say 
she and every other mistress does see to the 
kitchen fire, but equally, of course, they do 
nothing of the kind. If you don't believe 
me, take down your own file, and look at 
your own year's bill for coal. As a matter of 
fact, your cook ought not to burn more coal 
in winter than in summer. As a rule, she 
burns three times as much. Some cooks are 
clever enough to hide this by making up the 
surplus from the better coal. Nothing, how- 
ever, alters the fact that the real practical 
cooking of a house — in which I do not in- 
clude making a cup of tea — does not begin 
till near mid-day * and is over by 6 130 at 
latest. In other words a really good fire is 
required for about four hours, yet the 
sparks fly upwards for some sixteen hours. 

I expect that I shall have plenty of people 
writing to say they have tried gas, and found 
it was no saving at all, as they burned just as 
much coal as ever. With these persons I 
quite agree. In fact, I will go further; I 



* It is a growing custom to have for breakfast a 
cup of cofifee and rolls. 



The Domestic Inferno ©3 

should not be surprised to find that it proved 
infinitely more expensive, because, of course, 
if you still keep a fire burning from 6.30 
a. m, to 10 p. m., and gas besides, there is 
not much chance for economy to come in. 

There is much more to be said about 
women's sins in the direction of the kitchen, 
but they belong more particularly to the 
larder, and I will treat of them under that 
head. There is no good in taking too many 
things together. 





CHAPTER VIII 

THE BOTTOMLESS PIT. 

INCE writing my last 
chapter, and thinking out 
my present one, I went 
up to our Free Library, 
and got out the Slang 
Dictionary. I was 
anxious to find out why 
the abode of thieves is called a Thieves' 
Kitchen. I could not discover any reference 
to it, and I have not been able to make out 
what led to the Infernal regions being placed 
by popular assent under our feet. The ap- 
propriateness of the superstition seems to 
have been too obvious for anyone to bother 
inquiring into. 

The basement has as many departments as 

Dante's Inferno. We have looked into the 

kitchen and the coal hole, and found them 

pretty bad. But there is one place where the 

84 



The Bottomless Pit 85 

mistress of a house wastes less time and more 
money than in either. It is a popular delu- 
sion that every woman regularly visits her 
larder. In a large country-house, where it 
is roomy and light, she does in the summer, 
because it is cooler than the kitchen. But a 
comparatively small number of middle-class 
women live in large country-houses, and, as 
a rule, in towns and small houses, the larder 
is a dark cupboard under the stairs, and a 
housekeeper generally has to take the cook's 
word for its contents. But, however all this 
may be, even all those who visit it regularly, 
and take a candle with them, do so at entirely 
the wrong time, as I mean to show later on. 
The upstairs meals, as a rule, consist of 
breakfast, lunch, and dinner, where there is 
a late dinner. I do not know how many 
women are aware of the fact, but I am sure 
not one man in a thousand knows that his 
servants have just double that number of 
meals. The very first thing which every ser- 
vant in the world does — ^long before you are 
called — is to make herself tea. This is fol- 
lowed by the necessary breakfast, and 



86 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
scarcely has the mistress left her kitchen, 
after giving her orders, than every servant 
lays aside his or her work, and proceeds to 
partake of a meal which takes its name from 
the hour at which it is held. " Elevens," for 
such it is called, consists of a hurried snack, 
at which the domestic locusts devour all they 
can lay hands on. Under ordinary circum- 
stances, it would not be necessary to say that 
a meal could not take place unless there was 
something to eat. This however, does not 
seem to have struck the women of the last 
eighteen hundred and ninety-eight years. 
" Elevens " are not calculated for by mis- 
tresses, but they are provided for by the chief 
brigand — the cook. How is this done so 
that the mistress will not miss the food? 
Simply by abstracting it from the larder be- 
fore the mistress makes her inspection. 

Most of the wasteful over-eating and pil- 
fering of servants is due to giving the cook 
discretion as to what the domestics shall 
have for their supper. Everything in the 
way of food that disappears is accounted for 
by saying, " The servants .had it for their 



The Bottomless Pit By 

supper," and there is no going behind it. I 
admit this evil is a very difficult one to cope 
with, and I will state the other side. Where 
the rigid law of bread and cheese for the ser- 
vants' supper exists, great expense and waste 
ensue. Servants like nothing better than to 
eat themselves as nearly sick as possible, and 
the servant who eats a quarter of a pound of 
cheese and a half a loaf of bread, every 
night, to say nothing of ends of butter, costs 
something, I can tell you, more especially as 
you get no credit for the pieces of steak, odd 
cutlets, ends of pudding, and scraps gener- 
ally, which become the cook's perquisites, 
and when she cannot dispose of them in this 
way are allowed to go bad, or deliberately 
thrown upon the kitchen fire and burned. 
The generally-disorganized state to which 
the kitchen and larder have been allowed to 
come is so appalling that one hardly knows 
what to tackle first. 

In a business managed by men, say a 
shoemaker's, if a servant were caught sys- 
tematically carrying out ends of leather, 
wax, hemp, nails, etc., he would be handed 



88 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

over to a policeman, and would get six 
months' hard labor; but, owing to the ab- 
solutely unbusiness-like way in which wom- 
en manage their servants, the cook claims 
" perquisites " as her right, and disposes of 
buckets full of good food for cash, the butler 
bags the bottles, etc., the housemaid the 
candle-ends, medicine bottles, soap, etc., and 
she and the lady's maid, like the butler and 
footman, divide the clothes. I cannot spare 
the space to more than hint at the wholesale 
robbery which goes on under the very eyes of 
women, who, all the time, are expected, and 
profess to be, looking after the comfort and 
economy of men. It is a hard word to use, 
but most women simply connive at the rob- 
bery of servants, and if the real facts ever 
dawn upon them, they console their con- 
sciences by saying, " Oh well, anything for a 
quiet life ! " Apart from the upstairs pecu- 
lations, is there a woman living who does not 
know — for there is no excuse for her not 
knowing — that " the weekly scrub " regu- 
larly carries off a mysterious bundle which 
she did not bring in, and that she is simply 



The Bottomless Pit 89 

a go-between for the thieves without and the 
thieves within? 

To dismiss this painful subject, as I have 
said, the evils arising from " the servants' 
supper " are very difficult to solve. Of two 
evils, however choose the lesser. It is better 
economy to let the servants steal and eat the 
good food than that the ends of fish, poultry, 
and game, should be thrown upon the kitchen 
fire; but, whatever you do, on no account 
ever permit the existence of what is called 
"the swill pail." Once you allow such an 
institution, you set up for yourself a yawn- 
ing abyss, which devours everything which 
the cook can steal from the servants and 
yourselves. " The swill pail " is the direct 
product of the false economy of daily 
marketing. If you market daily, the result is 
odd quantities of everything, all of which 
go into " the swill pail " and, as a matter of 
fact, there is nowhere else to put them, for 
it seems difficult to persuade Anglo Saxon 
women to persist on the setting up of a stock- 
pot, which is an institution in every French 
establishment. There ought not to be a 



90 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

single house, or flat, however humble, where 
you ought not to be able to get, at five 
minutes' notice, a fine bowl of soup without 
expending one sixpence on gravy, beef, or 
vegetables. Into this should go every scrap 
of meat, fat, fowl, and all your spare gravy, 
your odd carrots, and half onions. Soup in 
this country is looked upon by women as an 
expensive luxury, instead of which it should 
be a staple dish in every humble home of the 
lower classes. But I have so much to say 
that I am drifting away again. 

It is a popular fallacy amongst women 
that they must buy their vegetables fresh, 
and fresh every day, and this is their argu- 
ment against purchasing large quantities, 
which would very much save their pockets. 
As a matter of fact, three-quarters of the 
vegetables used in a middle-class house are 
not, and do not, require to be fresh. Take 
for example, potatoes, turnips, carrots, on- 
ions, beetroots, celery for soup, leeks, cab- 
bages and cauliflowers, etc., etc. You are 
not foolish enough, I hope, to suppose that 
your greengrocer digs, pulls, or cuts these 



The Bottomless Pit 9 1 

every day for your special edifications. If 
you do, think so no longer, and amend your 
ways. Even the last two, cabbages and cauli- 
flowers, keep four or five days, and preserve 
whatever freshness they require much better 
in your cool, clean — you see, I am giving you 
all credit — larder than in a stuffy green- 
grocer's shop. 




CHAPTER IX 

CUPBOARD SKELETONS 

IN my last chapter I was about 
to condemn the butcher to 
be, as his trade demands, 
" hung," drawn, and four- 
quartered, but I thought it 
best to start again fresh. The 
butcher, owing to his trade, is looked upon 
as a sanguinary scoundrel of the worst order. 
I never knew but one butcher at all intimate- 
ly, and he was in a big way of business in 
the wholesale trade, but he told me this was 
the popular belief. He was very much down 
on authors who referred disrespectfully to 
butchers. He took this very much to heart, 
and went on to demonstrate to me that all 
the great men of the world had been, or had 
sprung from, butchers, even Shakespeare, 
and that he was perhaps the worst. I am 
sure nothing else would have made him read 
92 



Cupboard Skeletons 93 

Shakespeare, which, by the way, he knew 
very well, as far as the quotations about 
butchers went, at any rate. But there is an 
old superstition in favor of a man who 
breaks his rope being allowed to go free and 
repent, or hang himself, if he is anxious to 
die suddenly. I have no more space to spend 
on the butcher, and so to the next man in the 
tumbril. 

This is the baker. I suppose it is on ac- 
count of his white cap and apron, and the 
general flouriness of his appearance, that the 
baker is universally regarded as a bluff, 
honest fellow. He isn't ! He is a thief also 
and he grows fat on his flour-bags, and rich 
on his rascalities. The baker is the direct 
product of the lax way in which women man- 
age their business. He not only adulterates 
his bread with every deleterious matter he 
can lay his hands upon, but he has estab- 
lished it as a recognized custom of his trade 
— against which the law has no powers — 
that he is allowed to receive full money for 
short weight. The law says you shall have 
full weight if you demand it, but if you don't 



94 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

specially stipulate that you require your five 
cent loaf or your penny roll to be worth half 
the money you pay for it, you must not ex- 
pect it, nor complain. 

But how many women, except those of the 
very poor class, do this ? Not one in a thous- 
and. In spite of this already heavy tax on 
your pockets, there is scarcely any article ol 




household use which is so wasted as bread. 
I do not deny that bread is a thing for which 
an absolutely fixed order cannot always be 
given. When you are " expecting people," 
you have to provide for them; some days an 
extra quantity is used in cooking, as, for in- 
stance, in crumbs, toast, puddings, etc. But, 
over and above this, there is far too great a 
margin whch goes to waste. Every bread 



Cupboard Skeletons 95 

pan in the land is half- full of crusts and ends 
of loaves, which are allowed to go to waste. 
They are allowed to get hard and are 
thrown, unless given, away. In this matter 
your most honest servant has no compunc- 
tion. She, who will not steal a penny or let 
anyone else do so, will cheerfully give away 
pounds of meat and bread to every beggar 
who comes to the kitchen door, even if there 
were ten a day. This is not charity, for 
everyone knows, or ought to know, that beg- 
gars do not want bread, and only throw it 
over the first paling, or into the first garden 
they come across. It you don't believe me, 
have them watched, and see for yourself. 

It may be agreed that the robberies of the 
baker cannot be laid at the door of the mis- 
tress. There is something in this, but, like 
most general statements — my own included 
— it is not quite, that is to say, entirely, true. 
The mistress is responsible for all that goes 
wrong, and the baker, as well as the 
butcher, is an incentive to the nefarious prac- 
tice of perquisites. Every mistress who 
keeps her senses on the alert must know that 



96 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

her baker's and her butcher's books contain 
items which never see the inside of her house, 
and that the cook calmly passes eight-pound 
joints to be charged as ten, and neglects to 
change loaves, so that she may receive her 
miserable commission, which is a direct in- 
centive to robbery, for which tradesmen 
should get long terms of hard labor. 




Ought to get terms of hard labor. 

This brings me to an almost more import- 
ant factor in the pilfering line. I refer to the 
grocer's book. I have already inveighed 
against the weekly book. Such private ar- 



Cupboard Skeletons 97 

guments as I have had have not altered my 
views, and I will tell you why. Where a 
weekly book is kept — that is to say, where a 
weekly order is given — the cook always, de- 
signedly or otherwise, forgets something, 
generally a great many things, and, at the 
end of the week, you find these " had to be 
fetched in a hurry," and your book is bigger 
than you expected. Another reason for ex- 
travagance is that, where a weekly order is 
given, the items in the store cupboard are 
few, and, as a result, the mistress does not 
keep it locked or give out the things as they 
are wanted. The result is that the cook 
makes a point of using up or wasting every- 
thing that it contains, and the mistress only 
thinks, when she sees the empty cupboard, 
how clever and economical she is not to have 
ordered too much. Take my advice, and 
take it quickly. At once institute a monthly 
order, see that everything is delivered, check 
it over as it is put in the store, and put the 
key in your pocket. This will save you a 
great deal of trouble, and a great deal of 
money, and you will find your table is better 



9^ The Domestic Blunders of Women 
furnished, and that you are living better for 
very much less money. 

You may well ask, how can this be? In 
the first place, you can buy large quantities 
cheaper than you can small quantities. Sec- 
ondly, your order being a larger and more 
important matter, you will do it more care- 
fully, and will write it down. Thirdly, you 
may be induced to keep the list for reference, 
and you will see that what you have ordered 
is delivered, and that you get the benefit of 
what is over. You have no idea what a 
difference it will make till you try it. Your 
kindling wood, jam, raisins, rice, sugar, etc., 
may remain much the same after a few 
months, but you will find you will save on 
hundreds of boxes of matches — which were 
thrown on the fire — and that you always 
have in hand plenty of dessert, anchovies, 
sardines, spices, and all the etceteras which 
cost so much, and disappear so quickly, but 
which have to be in a house not so much for 
daily use as when required for an emergency. 

I am always coming back, like a maker 
of ballades, to the same refrain. In all busi- 



Cupboard Skeletons 99 

nesses managed by men, no order is given 
or accepted without a written check. If you 
want really to manage your house on any- 
thing like business principles, to save money, 
and have a good time, go round to a small 
local printer, and get him to make up for you 
— they will only cost you about three dollars 
— ten books, containing one hundred forms 
each, which you should fill up (as in italics) 
whenever you give an order, something like 
the following: 



1900 



To 

Kindly supply to 

148 York avenue, 
Westerleigh Heights. 



NO CHARGE WILL BE RE- 
COGNIZED UNLESS A 
SIGNED ORDER CAN BE 
PRODUCED. 

March ist, igoo. 

To f. Spriggins. 

Kindly supply to 
148 York avenue, 
Westerleigh Heights 

5 lbs. Best Candles, 

6 lbs. Brown Sugar, 

8 Bars Primrose Soap. 
3 tins Blacking, etc. 

(Signed) 




CHAPTER X 

THE MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN 

AM now going to 
offer some criti- 
cisms which I 
know will be re- 
sented far more 
than anything I 
have so far writ- 
ten, and my only 
hope is that what I 
say will do some good. 

I have shown that the whole system is 
wrong, that all the accepted ideas of manage- 
ment are grotesque, and that women have no 
idea how to save, or to spend, money, and 
that, therefore, they should not be entrusted 
with it. Having done this, and it having 
been admitted I have proved my case, let me 
hope women will profit by my advice, and 
mend their ways. But the management of 




The Management of Children lOl 
children is a more serious business, and, 
though I am sorry to say it, I am convinced 
that women are more ignorant of the man- 
agement of their nurseries than of any other 
parts of their houses. Perhaps some statis- 
tically-incHned correspondent will kindly 
give us a statement of the annual mortality 
of children. Personally, I do not know it, 
but I believe it to be enormous, so enormous 
indeed as to be out of all proportion to any 
other death-rate known. Large as it may 
be proved to be, it will not surprise me half as 
much as that it is not twice as large, for I 
know of no children who do not surprise me 
when they survive the treatment which they 
receive from their fond but foolish mothers, 
and the servants to whose care they are left. 
Is there any married woman living who 
can put her hand upon her heart and truth- 
fully say that, when her first baby was born, 
she had the very slightest idea as to what 
ought to be done with it ? Women have not 
the most elementary ideas as to how to take 
care of themselves. If this were a medical 
book, I could show that there is hardly a girl 



I02 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
living who, between the age of fifteen and 
her marriage, does not court her own death 
many times a year. But this is not a medical 
book and I will content myself by saying 
that most wives owe any health they may 
have to the persistent interference of their 
husbands. I am no advocate of what is 
wrongly called " rational " costume. This 
means, generally, giving up skirts, and non- 
sense of that kind. Neither am I going to 
run my head against the stone wall of cor- 
sets. Personally, I not only like girls to 
wear stays, but I believe they are a great sup- 
port to women; but this does not mean that 
I advocate tight-lacing any more than I do 
tight boots. But is there any sane person 
who will argue that half a yard of cambric 
is a rational costume on a cold winter's day ? 
I do not wish to pursue this subject further 
than to point out that it is to women, who 
have such extraordinary ideas of clothing 
themselves, that the costuming of children is 
left. 

There are three things, I take it, which 
are material to the health of young children, 



The Management of Children 103 
namely, warmth, air and exercise, and food. 
I do not think that there is one of them which 
women understand; but let us take them one 
at a time. I shall never forget being told by 
my wife, with tears, what a terrible thing it 
was that her first baby had got cold, and that 
that meant having a cold all the winter. This 
had been told to her by the nurse, for the 
nurse said the same thing when I went up- 
stairs. I found the poor child crawling about 
the floor in a costume which is best described 
by saying that it was that of a premiere dan- 
sense, only more scanty. From the waist 
downwards the child had nothing on but 
skirts a few inches long, and a pair of short 
cotton socks. I soon sent out for some yards 
of flannel, built the fire half-way up the chim- 
ney, kept the child in bed on hot drinks, and 
within a few days — despite what was called 
" such a terribly weakening treatment " — 
the child was quite well. 

Despite " the marvelous way in which 
baby shook off the cold " — as the cure was 
called — ^the women fought hard to restore 
the inhuman garments from which I had 



104 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

rescued it. I insisted on the poor little legs 
being kept swathed in flannel, and although 
I was told it was most terribly weakening, 
and was given every other mad reason for 
sacrificing the child to the convenience of the 
nurse, " the baby " remained so till he went 
into knickerbockers and long stockings, and 
to-day he is pretty sturdy on his pins in a 
football scrimmage. Now, don't let every 
woman write and say that children are not 
kept half-naked from the time they are six 
months old — for such is not the. truth. They 
are; and that such a practice exists is noth- 
ing short of criminal negligence. 

I don't mean to say that women mean to 
be cruel. I don't think they do. They simply 
don't think what they are doing and allowing 
to be done. If you suggested taking " the 
baby " out without its cap, to say nothing of 
stripping it to the waist, they would think 
you mad; but it never occurs to them that 
the exposure of the pit of the stomach to the 
winds of heaven is five times as dangerous. 
If these facts are true, and I shall be sur- 
prised if they can be combated, how can 



The Management of Children 105 
women contend that they manage children 
better than men would ? How can they con- 
tend that they have the very slightest idea of 
how to manage children at all ? 

But I do not wish to be too dogmatic. The 
absurd custom of stripping children half- 
naked, and being surprised and crying floods 
of tears when they die, must surely have 
some champions who can give some reason 
for what seems to most lay minds sheer cru- 
elty or mere ignorance. If there be such, let 
them now speak up, to my undoing. 

Everything a woman knows, or is sup- 
posed to know, she credits the rest of the 
world with being entirely ignorant of. This 
is my point. Why should women be the 
only persons who are believed to be able to 
take care of children ? As a matter of fact, 
a woman, left to herself, generally nearly 
kills her child, and then rushes off to fetch 
the doctor — a man, mind you — to get her out 
of the awful mess which she has got herself 
into. I know I shall be attacked for even 
daring to touch upon the subject of children. 
The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick 



I06 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

maker, perhaps — but children ! What can a 
man know of children ? I can imagine every 
second woman in the land saying this. But 
the point we have to consider is — What do 
women know of children? 

Now, it must be admitted that women 
have the entire management of children. 
What is the result ? The plague of London 
hardly equaled the present infant mortality 
of London or New York. Why is this? 
Why do more children die every year than 
calves or lambs, or kittens, or puppies, or 
anything else? I don't say there is no rea- 
son. I want you to tell me, and prove to me, 
if you can, that it is for any other reason in 
the world except because they are managed 
by women. That's what I want to believe if 
I can, but, frankly, I don't believe it. I don't 
believe women have the very slightest idea 
how children should be taken care of. As I 
have said, all they want is proper food, rea- 
sonable clothing, and proper air and exercise. 
Given these things, they ought to as surely 
grow as seed that gets proper moisture and 
sunlight. As a rule, children are fairly 



The Management of Children 1 07 

healthy, when they are born. If they were 
not, they would never survive the fearful 
trials of their birth. Subjected to the same 
treatment which children receive, all the 
kittens and puppies which are born would 
never open their eyes. 

Most children survive being weaned. 
After that most of them are poisoned by their 
mothers and their nurses. What is the first 
motive to look for ? What are women most 
fond of? Of all things, sweets. Women 
simply love sweets, and, in their usual irra- 
tional way, they give children sweets. I 
have said "give their children sweets." 
Why, they simply stuff them with sweets! 
There is nothing they do not give them 
sweets with. They sweeten their bottles, 
they sweeten their bread, they give them 
sweets when they are good, they give them 
sweets when they are naughty! Indeed, I 
do not know when it is they do not give them 
sweets. I remember asking one of my own 
children what she had had for dinner. The 
prompt answer was " Pudding ! " I was at 



lo8 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

first surprised at the apparent stupidity of an 
otherwise sharp child, and I said : 

" Yes, you had pudding after dinner, but 
what did you have for dinner? " 

" Oh ! you mean the beginning? " 

There you have it better than any grown 
person could put it. The child had simply 
been taught that pudding — which is simply 
an excuse for sugar — was dinner. The rest 
of her food was regarded as a sort of useless 
preliminary. The result is that most chil- 
dren die of sweets. Sweets simply ruin a 
healthy appetite, and are to children what 
drinking is to men. 

Next to their mothers, the chief murderers 
of children are their nurses. Nothing is so 
pernicious as the custom of nursery meals. 
It simply means that as the nurse and the 
children have, more or less, to eat the same 
meals, the nurse takes jolly good care the 
children have what she likes, rather than 
what is good for them. If she dislikes fish, 
for instance, she says the children cannot eat 
fish. The mother not knowing, and the chil- 



The Management of Children 1 09 
dren saying what they are told to say, they 
never have fish. It is the same with suet 
pudding or eggs, rice puddings, and all the 
rest of it. There is no good in saying this 
is not true, because it is human nature, 
and you can't go behind that. Then again, 
nurses love to feed children on what they 
themselves like. In their ignorant way, they 
think this is kind, and they are always feed- 
ing even the youngest children on meat. Far 
too much meat is given to children. They 
cannot digest it, more especially when their 
stomachs are destroyed by sweets and sips of 
beer and wine, and every other mess which 
women are never content unless baby has a 
taste of. As a rule, the diet of children 
would kill most men and women. From 
morning to night they are stuffed with food. 
Besides their regular meals, which are too 
big for their appetites, and not sufficiently 
frequent, they munch biscuits and cake and 
bread and butter, with layers of sugar or 
jam, from the time they get up till the time 
they go to bed, with the result that they have 
to be regularly physicked. Such violent 



no The Domestic Blunders of Women 
remedies would kill a horse, and, indeed, it is 
akin to the system by which light-weight 
jockeys are killed. 

Women think they can feed children by 
instinct. That's how they kill them. They 
also imagine that all children have the same 
digestions, and the result is, you find a whole 
nursery-full of children all eating the same 
food, and all subjected to the same treatment. 
Could anything be more mad ? Does it not 
stand to reason that if some grown-up peo- 
ple, whose digestions have survived the treat- 
ment of their youth, cannot eat the same 
food as other people, children require dieting 
too? 

Some of the women I have spoken to on 
this subject have denied most things that 
others have admitted. They have said that 
men cannot manage their businesses, that 
men cannot manage their money, that men 
cannot manage their servants, and of all 
things, that they cannot manage women. It 
is only reasonable, therefore, to suppose that 
it will be denied that men can manage 
children. One thing is perfectly certain, and 



The Management of Children i n 
that is, that women do not. But I will ask 
those who will want to scratch my eyes out 
how they account for the fact that men do 
manage children, and manage them very well 
— more especially girls, A complete list 
of the large institutions managed by men 
would be impossible, but surely I may cite 
such large schools as Smith's College and 
Vassar, which are not only managed, but 
magnificently managed, by men, many, if 
not most, of whom are bachelors, strange 
as it may seem. 

I have already demonstrated that women 
have no idea how to properly dress children, 
and that their method of feeding them is 
something worse than foolish. If any other 
reason were wanted to prove that women 
cannot manage children, it could very easily 
be found. Children, everyone must admit, 
are mere creatures of impulse. The old pro- 
verb says, " Bend the twig as you would 
have it grow," and surely it must be ac- 
knowledged that children are, as a rule, 
abominably behaved. That each has a natu- 
ral instinct peculiar to itself must also be ad- 



112 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

mitted, but that children are naturally bad 
I do not at all think. None of their other 
inclinations are in any way developed; there- 
fore, why should it be imagined that they are 
inherently naughty? As a matter of fact, 
they are not. They are largely imitative, of 
course, and if they saw good manners going 
on about them, they would as instinctively 
imitate good behavior as they would bad. 
Everybody who has studied the question 
knows that they presume enormously, if they 
are allowed to do so; but, in the first place, 
if they did not see bad manners, and, in the 
second place, were checked in a timely fash- 
ion, they would give pleasure to everyone. 

It is quite the exception to find a child who 
is at all bearable. Their fathers and their 
mothers put up with them, of course; but 
where is the child who is at all fit to be 
brought down to see company, and who can 
behave at all decently in the presence of 
strangers ? It may be natural to a child to 
resent a toy being taken from him, but it is 
not natural that a child should fling himself 
down on the hearthrug in paroxysms of rage 



The Management of Children 113 
on every available occasion. Children, as a 
rule, howl for everything; it is natural to 
them to cry when they are hurt, of course, 
but it is not natural that they should kick and 
plunge and bellow the whole house down be- 




Children howl for everything. 

cause they are not allowed to break some- 
thing of value. If they are taught — that is 
to say, allowed to believe — that they will get 
anything they want by crying for it, of 
course they will cry ; but if they are taught 
that the one certain way of not getting any- 



114 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
thing is to cry for it, then crying is the very 
last thing they will resort to, for they are 
just as clever as monkeys. But women do 
not teach them this. As soon as the child 
cries for anything, a woman will give it to 
him sooner than go through the ordeal of 
hearing him cry. A child crying is a pain- 
ful sight, and the very best way to go about 
stopping it is to show him that crying will 
do him no good. 

A great deal of the bad manners of chil- 
dren is due to their mothers, but not directly 
so. The people who spoil them most are 
the servants, and here, I think, the child has 
very just reason to complain of the treat- 
ment he receives. If you keep your children 
all day and all night, week in and week out, 
year after year, in the company of low-bred, 
vulgar, and disinterested persons like ser- 
vants, how can you expect that your children 
will grow up and behave themselves like lit- 
tle gentlemen and ladies, and that they will 
be fit to come down to the drawing-room or 
the dining-room, or to behave themselves 
like Christians ? It is not reasonable. Chil- 



The Management of Children 1 1 5 

dren ought to spend a very considerable por- 
tion of every day in the drawing-room with 
their mother, and should mix with her 
guests, and be taught to move about and not 
touch things, and not make themselves a 
nuisance to anyone. It is just as easy to 
teach a child to behave well as to behave 
badly. Of course, you must show the 
stronger will; but once you have established 
that, you can do anything with a child, and, 
believe me, it is the kindest thing to do. It 
must be distinctly understood, however, that 
I am no advocate for slapping or beating 
children in any way. It is absolutely un- 
necessary. The most unruly child will sub- 
mit to a stronger will which prescribes slight 
punishments and sees them carried out. But 
if you once give way to a child, or go back 
on your word, you are making a rod for your 
own back, and your children, instead of be- 
coming a comfort, grow up to be nothing 
short of little devils. 

On the other hand, I do not at all main- 
tain that you should never strike a child. 
There are some children who require it. 



1 16 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
They are very, very few, but there are some, 
as there are exceptions to everything. But 
there is one thing you should never do — ^you 
should never slap a child or correct him with 
your hand. There are two evils which re- 
sult from this. The first is that no man or 
woman at all recognizes how strong his or 
her hand is when brought into contact with 
the tiny frame of a child. You may hurt 
children very seriously, and much more than 
you ever know. The second reason for not 
correcting a child with your hand is that you 
may not hurt him at all, and this is just as 
bad as the other — in fact, rather worse. 
There is only one way in which you should 
beat a child. You must go out into your gar- 
den, and get the very smallest switch which 
you can find, and when the unruly young 
gentleman's clothes are taken off him, you 
should give him two or three, or four or five 
sharp cuts where, as the French say, " Le 
dos change le nom." If you do this properly, 
you certainly will not permanently injure the 
child, and there is a very great chance that 
you may never have to repeat an operation 



The Management of Children 1 1 7 
which hurts you more than it does the child. 
But here again we have a proof of the abso- 
lute incapacity of a woman to manage chil- 
dren. A wife will contend with her husband 
that only women can manage children, but in 
the end she goes to her husband, and tells 
him that he must administer the corporal 
punishment, because she cannot bear to do it. 
This is not only bad for the child, but is 
grossly unfair to the man. It is a great shame 
that a father should be held up to a child as a 
bogey. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE HOUSE DIRTY 




WILL not confuse you, 
dear ladies, by telling you 
who it was who defined 
"dirt" as "matter out 
of place." It will be 
enough for your bird- 
like brains if you can re- 
member the phrase, for 
one and all you dwell 
contentedly in dirt. If I 
were to leave this phrase 
unexplained, every single 
one of you would misinterpret it to mean 
I thought you were not addicted to clean 
linen and the bath, or that your minds 
are debased by the witnessing of sights 
or the perusal of books " in which pure 
women may not look." I have my own 
ii8 



The House Dirty 1 19 

ideas as to whether women, as a class, 
are better than men, but I am not ar- 
guing that point, now, and so do not, as is 
too often your way, let us confuse the prem- 
ises by going off into side issues. I hope you 
understand distinctly that when I say you 
dwell contentedly in dirt, I confine my re- 
marks within the limits of the definition that 
" dirt is matter out of place." 

In another chapter I have shown you that 
your basements are the real dust-holes of 
your houses. I think I have disposed of 
the contention of many that all the faults laid 
at your kitchen-doors are not the fault of 
your favorite bugbear, the servants, but that 
you are directly responsible for both servants 
and their faults. 

It is now my intention to carry the in- 
dictment further by taking it into every nook 
and corner, and not only into every nook 
and corner, but into every open place and 
every closed space in what you love to call a 
woman's domain. I do not think even the 
strongest-minded and the most pugnacious 
of you will deny the partiality which your 



1 20 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

servants — women servants, mind you — have 
for sweeping dust and fluff into corners, un- 
der carpets, mats, and rugs, of disposing of 
burnt matches in fireplaces, of emptying dust- 
pans into baths, and sinks, and other places, 
and of leaving their brushes and brooms, 
their dusters, etc., etc., all over the house — in 
corners, under sofas, under (and even on) 
chairs, bureaus, on the stairs and landings, 
balanced on banisters and indeed anywhere 
they can temporarily dispose of them — to the 
entire disfigurement of the house when you 
come down in the morning.* 

This putting away of things in places 
" handy-like " is a most deplorable system, 
but I cannot bring myself to blame the ser- 
vants, for in it I see but a development of 
every woman's methods of what she is 
pleased to call " tidying up " or " making the 
place straight." 

The clean and tidy little Japanese have 
practically no furniture at all in their houses. 
What they have is brought out when it is 
required for use, and when it has served its 
turn it is folded up and put away in its proper 



The House Dirty 121 

place. This is also their habit with decora- 
tions. When a guest is expected the walls 
are hung with pictures, when tea is served 
trays and stools are brought in, and you find 
the house decorated with bronzes, ivories, 
and flowers. If a guest were unexpectedly to 
return half an hour after his departure, he 
would find that the pictures had been rolled 
up and put away, and, indeed, that the gaily- 
decorated room was perfectly bare. 

Now, I do not go so far as to say that you 
should strictly follow out these methods of 
those clean and tidy little people, though 
they are all instinctively imbued with perfect 
taste and are the greatest decorative artists 
the world has ever known. But I do say 
that you might go a long way in imitating 
them with great advantage to art and clean- 
liness. I am very fond of good furniture, 
myself, as shall be demonstrated hereafter; 
but if a man of sense and taste were to go 
round his house and note and price all the 
hideous and superfluous articles that a wom- 
an strews round a house, he would be simply 
horrified. We have all a great deal too much 



122 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
furniture, even when it is of the very best, 
and our walls are over-crowded with every- 
thing which can be stood against them or 




A bonfire in the back-yard 



hung upon them. To turn your walls into 
the semblance of a bric-a-brac shop or an ex- 



The House Dirty 1 23 

hibition of pictures is in the worst of taste, 
and to make your rooms into a sort of furni- 
ture warehouse, is to make your home un- 
comfortable at the expense of art. But when 
the pictures, vases, clocks, chandeliers, can- 
dlesticks, and other so-called chimney orna- 
ments, are of the most crude manufacture 
and in the most detestable taste, a husband 
who respects himself and his wife ought to 
send away his family to the seaside, and go 
out and pawn all the " china " and glass, and 
Parian marble figures he can lay hands on, 
and lose the ticket and all memory of where 
he has disposed of them. He then should 
buy a box of matches, and having gone all 
over the house, and gathered together all the 
antimacassars, mats, bulrushes, art muslin, 
bamboo work, carved Swiss brackets, reed 
curtains, Birmingham Japanese fans and 
other eyesores and dust traps he can lay 
hands on, he should make a bonfire in his 
back-yard. Foolish men, who repeat the 
nonsense they hear, are in the habit of say- 
ing, " It is easy to discern a feminine hand 
about a room." It is and if I had my way 



1 24 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
no woman should have a hand in such mis- 
chief as is found " for idle hands to do." 

Women suffer from the delusion that they 
are neat by nature, and that it is their mis- 
sion in life to " tidy up," Their way of in- 
dulging this itch is to stuff things away — 
anywhere out of sight. On these lines the 
magpie and the monkey are their masters. 
The real secret of tidiness is to leave things 
where they can be found by the persons who 
require them, and not to hide them away in 
blotters and presses and drawers; not to go 
into a man's study and to put all his papers 
indiscriminately into packages, or a receipted 
bill into an envelope which he is sure to de- 
stroy. 

In a woman's eye every business paper is 
an unsightly object, which she considers it 
her duty to dispose of, and though she may 
hear the man who owns it cursing about the 
house, she never has the grace of the jack- 
daw of Rheims to come forward and say 
what she has done with it. Indeed, she 
will deny with indignant innocence and tears 
that she ever touched his papers, and when, 



The House Dirty 125 

if haply it is discovered, he looks reproach- 
ful or smiles, she simply says, " Oh ! is that 
what you are looking for? my dear, you 
should not leave such things about." Just 
as if he had no right to the use of a table 




or the corner of a chimneypiece in his own 
house. 

Not only are women sublimely unreason- 
able in such matters, but their taste in the 
matter of decoration is most abominable. 

I have accepted the definition that "' dirt 
is matter out of place," and I have shown 
how important matters become dirt by being 



126 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

put by tidying-up hands " out of place." I 
have hinted at some of the ways a house may 
be made dirty and hideous by being filled up 
with every form of dust-collecting atrocity 
which can be manufactured. I will now 
turn my attention to how women can even 
misapply nature to this end. Few would 
deny that flowers are very beautiful things 
in their right place. When they are matter 
out of place, they become, of course, accord- 
ing to our definition, dirt. There are few 
of women's delusions so firmly footed as that 
" nothing is so pretty about a house as a few 
flowers." There are not many women who 
can resist spending a large proportion of 
their housekeeping money on what they call 
a few fresh flowers, on the pretext that the 
place would look so bare without them if any 
one came to tea. Now, in the first place, the 
flowers are not fresh, and, even if they were, 
they have been the close associates of others 
which have probably spent the night under 
the bed of a lodging-house, inhaling every 
kind of dirt and poison it is possible to col- 
lect. In the second place, as they grow stale, 



The House Dirty 127 

they and the water they are placed in give off 
evil fumes. Besides, they are entirely out 
of place stuck on tables which are meant to 
be used; and what with the cutting of stalks, 
the staining of scissors, and the slopping of 




water in the initial stage, and the peril of 
their absurdly long and unstable glasses be- 
ing upset and broken, they are about the 
most dangerous and most expensive folly 
that women waste their time over. 

All that I have written here should go far 
to prove even to the prejudiced that women 
are untidy, and that, therefore, they permit 
or collect dirt about a house. This should be 



1 2$ The Domestic Blunders of Women 

enough; but I feel that if I do not draw the 
contrast which I have always drawn, the 
feminine mind, which it is my mission to 
correct, might reply with their favorite " tu 




quoque " — ^which freely translated means, 
" you're another," and illustrates a woman's 
habit of arguing that two blacks make one 
white, two wrongs a right. 

You, dear ladies, will no doubt say before 
you have read any further : " Oh ! I like that. 



The House Dirty 129 

Go into any husband's study and see how un- 
tidy it is." It is quite true that husband's 
studies are not given up to nice tidy art mus- 
lin, bamboo, bulrushes, imitation bronzes, 
and German " china " ornaments. They are 
filled with papers. Quite true ! But papers 
are not necessarily more untidy than any- 
thing else, though you think so. What is the 
real reason why the papers are lying about? 
I will tell you. It is because, after years of 
experience, no man can trust you or your ser- 
vants to touch his papers. Turn your eyes 
round his office next time you are there late. 
You will find all his letters are filed care- 
fully, and his books are put away every night, 
and that he and his clerks can lay their hands 
on any paper at a moment's notice, while 
they know how everything which has gone 
away has been disposed of. That's what I 
call being tidy and being clear-minded. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE HOUSE HIDEOUS 

N the last chapter I in- 
veighed against the 
furniture with which 
women lumber up their 
houses, and in my just 
indignation I went so 
far as to suggest that, 
after the Japanese 
fashion, we should 
have practically no furniture at all, and, 
really, though I meant to modify that state- 
ment in my present essay, I have a good 
mind to stick to my original plea. It is really 
extraordinary what slaves women are to cus- 
tom, and the ordinary man is very much of 
the same unthinking way. 

One of the most remarkable things in the 
world is the custom of keeping a dog — the 
130 




The House Hideous 1 3 ' 

most absolutely useless creature — for he does 
no work of any kind, and he is not good to 
eat. Yet man, who is supposed to be a think- 
ing animal with his own thoughts to fall 
back upon, seems not to be able to exist 
unless he keeps a dog, which he feeds, buys 
a license for, redeems when it is stolen or 
strays, and pays continual fines for every 
time that it fights another dog, or mangles 
his neighbor's child. I suppose that one way 
and another, considering that many men 
keep many dogs, on an average every home 
in this country pays at least ten dollars a year 
towards the support of dogs. The millions 
a year this represents it may amuse my 
readers to work out for themselves. The 
same applies to cats. I shall never forget 
seeing a very charming and benevolent lady 
of my acquaintance cut a plate of meat off 
her own joint and place it in the square for 
the cats to eat, while she stood by and saw 
that the hungry children, who could not 
catch sparrows or mice, did not steal it. 

If I digress, it is but for the purpose of 
schooling you quietly into accepting the fact 



132 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
that we are slaves to furniture as we are 
slaves to dogs and cats, for, really, the dog 
is not nearly so much " the friend of man " 
as man is the friend of dog. Of course, the 
real fact is that the dog is mentally the supe- 
rior creature, and, being a philosopher — hav- 
ing settled in his own mind that work is all 




nonsense, that there is no such thing as 
riches, that all, even the most successful or 
brilliant, man ever gets out of the world is 
enough to eat and a bed to die in — the dog, 
like the woman, gives himself over to a man, 
displays a certain affection for him, and the 
vain, foolish fellow works hard, and keeps 
the dog in lazy luxury all his life. Men talk 



The House Hideous 1 33 

of hard work as " a dog's life." Was there 
ever such irony? 

If man is the slave of dog, woman is the 
slave of furniture. If women only knew 
how much more graceful — ^and the only way 
is to appeal to their vanity — ^they would be 
reclining on the floor, they would never sit 
up on chairs or round a table. That this is 
fundamentally true is proved by the fact that 




they are never so happy as at a picnic, where 
there are no chairs and tables. I really be- 
lieve that the craze for putting everything on 
something above the floor — ^by which I mean 
tables, sideboards, etc. — ^grew from the cus- 
tom of sleeping in ugly, cumbersome, and 



134 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
dirt-collecting beds instead of on the floor. 
Of course, the reason why women do not 
sleep on the floor is because they are afraid 
of beetles, and mice, and other harmless 
things. Woman, therefore, having invented 
the bed, invented the table to stand by it, 
and thus spread the habit of putting every- 
thing above the level of the floor. 

Woman's original sin of being afraid of 
black beetles and mice costs man more than 
all the Royalty, armies, navies, pension lists, 
prisons, poverty, schooling, national debts, 
and wars of Europe. 

I am sure I am not putting it too high 
when I say that the average cost of furniture 
per house is $i,ooo, and if the world would 
only agree not to cumber its rooms with beds 
and tables, sideboards, cabinets and chairs, 
our ground-rents would be about half what 
they are, and the over-crowding of our cities 
would come down proportionately. 

But as women cannot be persuaded that 
black beetles are not poisonous serpents, and 
that mice are not man-eating tigers, it may 
be well to see how the furniture question, 



The House Hideous 1 3 5 

from the financial and hideous point of view, 
can be got over. Of course, half the dif- 
ficulty of expense and ugliness would be done 
away with if all presses, cupboards, side- 
boards, seats, dressers, etc., which protrude 
into the rooms were let into the walls, there- 
by making charming recesses, and giving an 
opportunity for graceful arches. 

But as most houses "are not built that 
way," some more practical suggestion is 
needed. To say that a sideboard, four feet 
by six, is required to support half a dozen 
tumblers, which ought to be kept in the 
pantry, and a cabinet of the same proportions 
is needed to hide a few pieces of music, is 
absurd. And so we see that a large propor- 
tion of our furniture is intended, not for use, 
but as ornament. 

That most of the furniture which we find 
in middle-class houses is as bad in design and 
execution as it is in its lasting powers will 
be generally admitted. 

Nearly every man's experience teaches 
him that when his or his friend's furniture is 
sold, it does not fetch a third of what it 



1 3^ The Domestic Blunders of Women 

cost, and that fine old furniture purchased 
from a dealer fetches a high price. And yet, 
apparently, very few men and women learn 
the obvious lesson. Needless to say, the 
generality of men know little or nothing 
about the matter. To do them justice they 




Something really cheap. 

generally admit as much, the result being 
that their wives, who think there is nothing 
to know, and who like spending money, un- 
dertake to procure " what is wanted." 

They follow the same rule as they adopt 
in purchasing anything else. They go to a 
shop and ask the price of things which are 



The House Hideous 137 

as ugly as they are bad and expensive, and 
with these they fill their houses, and are 
moved to tears when they eventually are sold 
and fetch nothing, as the popular phrase 
runs. 

There are fifty-two weeks in the year, and 
not one of these passes that there are not 
some forty or fifty sales by auction in a city 
like London or New York alone. There is 
no doubt that a good deal of rubbish is sold 
at these sales; but I have attended hundreds 
in my time, and I do not think I am exagger- 
ating when I say I do not remember ever 
having been to a sale at which there was not 
something really good and really cheap. Be- 
fore making her house hideous forever, of 
course a woman should learn something of 
furniture. It is a very easy and a very 
pleasant acquirement, and when once mas- 
tered, is a never-failing delight to herself 
and to all her friends, for it always makes 
conversation, and as long as a woman has 
something to talk about, she is happy; and 
men, who like her, think she is very well in- 
formed. 



1 38 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

I could very easily write a dissertation on 
furniture, china, branzes, and all the bric-a- 
brac which goes to make a house pleasant to 
live in. Such, however, is not my intention. 
Such information is plentiful, and I am quite 
sure nothing useful is to be learned there- 
from. The best way is to potter about. I 
remember asking an old second-hand book- 
seller how he learned his business, and he 
frankly admitted that he picked up the great- 
er portion of his knowledge from his cus- 
tomers. I have found by experience that this 
is the real truth. The fact is, nobody knows 
everything about anything; but any one who 
knows anything will be only glad of a chance 
to show his knowledge to an appreciative hs- 
tener, oddly enough, even if he is not a cus- 
tomer. 

I well remember when I commenced buy- 
ing nice things myself. Nobody could have 
been more supremely ignorant than I was. 
The reason, too, was an odd one. I had had 
a great reverse of fortune; we were very 
poor indeed, and the little new house into 
which we moved was almost as bare as the 



The House Hideous 1 39 

walls of a vault or a chapel. I said I should 
like to try and pick up a few nice things 
cheap, but every one told me that those times 
had gone by; that people now know too 
much, and that I would only be " sold." I 
did try, and I found, as usual, that what 
every one said was wrong. Like every one 
else who succeeds, I bought my experience 
in dimes, and made the world pay for it in 
dollars. The proof of the pudding is not in 
the eating, but in the digesting of it. I com- 
menced very modestly by buying old Staf- 
fordshire figures, and of course I have been 
" sold," but I have had my victories, and I 
can truthfully say that my collection of 
bric-a-brac, such as it is — and it would fetch 
a few thousands to-morrow — has not cost me 
one dollar. 

But this is personal. The strange thing is 
that women who love to attend sales which 
are not " sales " at all in the proper accep- 
tation of the term, and will willingly buy 
goods for $1.49, which the day before they 
could have bought for $1.25, will not attend 
auction rooms and buy really good furniture 



140 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

for a third of the money for which they can 
buy bad furniture in a shop. 

Another reason for buying furniture when 
sold at auction is this. As a rule you have 




Then you offer htm s per cent, on his bargain. 



only the dealers to compete with, and it is 
always safe to outbid the dealers, who cannot 
afford, except in exceptional cases where 
they have a commission, to buy anything 



The House Hideous 1 4 1 

unless they can see a profit of 50 per cent, on 
it. 

Another tip is, sometimes to let a dealer 
have something he is bidding against you 
for, and then to offer him 5 per cent, on his 
bargain. Unless it is a very good thing, 
which he can easily dispose of quickly for a 
large profit, he will generally take your offer, 
and you may reckon that it has cost you 45 
per cent, less than if you bought it from the 
dealer when he had paid the expenses of 
taking it away to his shop. 




CHAPTER XIII 



THE BEST REMEDY FOR ALL BLUNDERS 



^^•-*0 doubt at the end of every 
B"r"i l\Ji chapter my readers have 
Ir'l** • put down this book with the 
~°= ejaculation : "' All this is 

very fine ; but what does the 
man want?" Or, "It is 
very easy to find fault; but 
what's the good, unless the 
author is prepared to show 
us a remedy?" I ask for 
no kinder criticism, and if I only prevail on 
my fair readers to adopt my suggestion, I 
shall be content, for I have been " cruel only 
to be kind " to man and woman alike. 

I commenced by saying " the house " was 

a branch of " the office," and that a wife 

should be a partner in the concern. That was 

my text, and I will be consistent and stick to 

142 




The Best Remedy for all Blunders 143 
it. I have far easier found the remedy than 
the faults. The remedy is quite simple. A 
business cannot be carried on unless accounts 
are kept. There is no good in denying this. 
It has been proved over and over again. It 
is easy to say " what's the good of keeping 
accounts of money that is spent ? keeping ac- 
counts won't put the money back in the 
bank." That's right in theory, but it does 
not work out in practice. Keeping accounts 
will put money back in the bank. Dear la- 
dies, this is business, and you don't under- 
stand business; but try it for a few years, 
and, as a reward, leave me half the balance 
in your wills. My children will die rich if 
you do this. 

You will not believe me when I say that, 
no matter how prosperous is the business of 
your husband, your father, or your lover, 
supposing any one of them were making a 
profit of fifty dollars a day, and had done so 
for years, if he were to put that money in 
his pocket and not keep any accounts he 
would be bankrupt in a year. You don't be- 
lieve it? You say it is only another of my 



144 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
paradoxes. Go to your husband, your father, 
or your lover, and ask — " What would hap- 
pen to your business if you kept no ac- 
counts ? " I should like to lay you a pair of 
gloves against the usual forfeit that they 
each say — " I should be bankrupt in a year/' 
and every woman in England would give me 
a kiss on the same terms. 

I suppose there are not many of my read- 
ers who will try, and I am sure there are 
very few who do try who will keep it up; but 
if they want to refute all my arguments, and 
make this book of no more value, they will 
expend a quarter on a simple little account- 
book, in which they will enter every penny 
they spend, and, most important of all, they 
will balance it up every week. 

Household expenditure should be thus 
regulated on business lines. The husband 
should enter into a working arrangement 
with his partner, A list of all expenses should 
be drawn up, and every week she should pro- 
duce her book and ask for a check, not only 
to meet the average weekly expenses, but to 



The Best Remedy for all Blunders I45 
include the rent, rates, taxes, wages, clothes, 
and school bills as they fall due. 

It would be impossible in these pages to 
draw up a series of tables to fit all incomes 
and tastes. I have drawn up one, but I am 
sure some will say that $2.24 is absurdly 
small for the butcher's book, and that two 
dollars is absurdly large for the fishmon- 
ger; there are people who think they are 
saving by having no fish and eating five dol- 
lars worth of butcher's meat. Some there 
are, too, who will say one dollar and fifty 
cents is absurdly little for washing, and 
others that it is too much. The explanation 
is that some " wash at home " and some do 
not. The items and amounts, however, do 
not matter at all. Arrange them all accord- 
ing to your own habits and incomes, but ar- 
range them on these lines : 

If your house rent is $400 a year, your 
weekly rent is $7.65. That is arrived at by 
dividing $400 by 52, the number of weeks in 
the year. You will find it is a fraction un- 
der, but no husband with any sense will mind 



146 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
giving you the benefit of the fraction. Con- 
tinue in the same way with every item of ex- 
penditure, and you will find the result will, 
be something like the following : 

Rent@$4oo $7.65 

Taxes, Water, etc 1.54 

Gas 1. 00 

Wages 4.00 

Stationery, Stamps, etc i . 50 

Doctor and Druggist 2. 00 

Cleaning windows and scrubbing. .. 1.50 

Hardware and Linen i.oo 

1 child's clothes 1 .00 

Wife's clothes 2.50 

14 pounds butcher's meat . . . . . 2.24 

14 quarts milk, at 8 cents 1. 08 

24 eggs, at 25 cents a doz 50 

Baker 75 

Fish 2.00 

Grocer and vegetable man 5.00 

Washing 1.50 

Coal 2.00 

Petty cash i .00 

$39-76 

You will see from this that, if this fairly 
represents your expenditure, you are living 
at the rate of about $2,200 a year, for there 
are yet your husband's clothes, railway fares, 
tobacco, etc., to be paid for, and only $132.48 
left with which to provide them. Still, if you 



The Best Remedy for all Blunders 147 
would present him every week with a balance 
sheet such as the following, I feel sure you 
would be able to lend him something to go 
on with from time to time : — 

MODEL OF BALANCE-SHEET OF WEEK. 

January 6th. 
Received by check $39-76 

January 6th. 

Butcher's Book $ 2.24 

Milk 1.08 

Baker 75 

Fishmonger and Poulterer 2.00 

Grocer and vegetable man S .00 

Washing 1.50 

Petty cash i .00 

Coal 2.00 

$15.57 
Average Rent, Taxes, Gas, Wages, 
Stamps, etc.. Stationery, Doctor, 
Chemist, Clothes, Windows, Re- 
pairs, Hardware, and Linen, as 
agreed per above list $24. 19 

$39-76 

Having paid your household expenses of 
the week, amounting to $15.57, you would 
have $24.19 in your bank, and your follow- 
ing week's balance-sheet, provided your 



148 The Domestic Blunders of Women 
weekly books amounted to as much as last 
week, would read as follows : — 

January 12th. 

Balance in Bank $24. 19 

Check received 39.76 



$63.95 



January 12th. 



Butcher's Book $2.24 

Milk 1.08 

Baker 75 

Fishmonger and Poulterer 2.00 

Grocer and vegetable man 5.00 

Washing 1.50 

Petty Cash i .00 

Coal 2.00 

$15.57 
Average Rent, etc., as agreed 24. 19 

$39-26 
Balance at Bank 24. 19 

$63.95 

Having once more paid your household 
expenses for the week, your balance at the 
bank would be $63.95, ^^i^ you would enter 
it on your next week's balance-sheet, being 
careful, of course, to see that the totals on 
each side balanced as before. 



The Best Remedy for all Blunders I49 
This may look very formidable at first 
sight, but it is really as simple as A B C; and 
your husband would explain it to you, and 
straighten it up every week for you. As a 
matter of fact, you are sure to spend little 
sums which you will forget. I won't say that 
doesn't matter, but it doesn't matter much. 
The main thing is to keep some account, and 
the odd pence which you can't remember can 
always be put right by adjusting the " petty 
cash." Indeed, that is what the "petty cash " 
is for. If you will master this simple rule, 
you will have overcome the most serious of 
all the " Domestic Blunders of Women," and 
have attained, as I have, 

THE END. 



CORRESPONDENCE 




trn3 _ ^ __^ 

-RUGUAYAN 

■^g^ ' heart i 1 y en- 
*"" dorses A Mere Man's 
arguments. "You are 
right," he says, " every 
time in your articles. 
I am glad to say that 
they don't touch my 
wife, who is wonderfully free from the mis- 
takes you point out — tho not as perfect as 
if she had been regularly trained to housekeep- 
ing as men are trained to business. Now do 
you not think that regular training schools 
should be started to teach housekeeping and 
domestic economy ? They should be on a very 
strict business footing — in fact, I think girls 
might go out as apprentices to restaurants and 
hotels. If they did so, then it would be an 
easier matter to get houses attended to by an 
outside gang of servants, i. e., meals from the 
restaurant at the comer, housemaids and win- 
151 



152 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

dow cleaners in at regular hours, floor scrub- 
bers, lamp cleaners, boot cleaners, etc., the 
whole job undertaken by a responsible firm for 
a single payment. Breakages and theft cov- 
ered also. Girls who had had experience of 
hotel management would welcome such assist- 
ance. 

" Our experience is that of the ' Housekeep- 
er of Twenty Years,' that my wife knows too 
much for a bad servant to put up with. Con- 
sequently we have had perhaps a dozen 
changes a year, but as many come back to us 
again, and we often keep a good one some 
time — till they marry — it cannot be a bad 
place. We have, however, made a discovery, 
and find we can get a very superior class 
of servant, and any number of them at lower 
wages than an ordinary servant, and a far more 
intelligent class, but I must not give this away. 

" But the trouble after all is that all the 
young men crowd round a pretty face and a 
smart frock, and don't ask for a certificate of 
competency before they marry — and therefore 
they must abide by the consequences of their 
unbusinessAike conduct. 

" You are right, too, about the children. My 
wife takes jolly good care of hers. We have 
been married ten years and never had the 
least disagreement, and she was one of the 
smart ones, too." 



Correspondence 1 53 

Peggie contributes the following amusing 
comment. " I take the liberty of sending you 
this old Scottish song in connection with the 
subject, with which you are dealing: — 

JOHN GRUMLIE 

John Grumlie swore by the light o' the moon 

And the green leaves on the tree, 
That he could do more work in a day. 

Than his wife could do in three. 
His wife rose up in the morning, 

With cares and toils e'now, 
' John Grumlie, bide at hame^ John, 

An' I'll gae haud the plough. 



* First ye maun dress your children fair. 

And put on them their gear ; 
And ye maum mind to turn the maut, 

Or else ye'U spoil the beer. 
And ye maun reel the tweel, John, 

That I span yesterday, 
And ye maun mind to ca' in the hens, 

Or they^U a' lay away.' 



Oh, he did dress his children fair, 

And put on them their gear ; 
But he forgot to turn the maut, 

And so he spoiled the beer. 
He merrily sang as he reel'd the tweel 

His wife span yesterday ; 
But he forgot to ca' in the hens, 

And the hens a' laid away. 



154 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

The hawkit crummie let doon nae milk. 

He cream nor butter gat; 
And a gaed wrang, and nocht gaed richt, 

He danced wi' rage and grat. 
Then up he ran to the head o' the knowe, 

Wi' mony a wave and shout, 
She heard him, as she heard him not, 

And turned her stots about. 



John Grumlie's wife cam hame at e'en, 

And lauched as she'd gae mad, 
To see the house in siccan a plight. 

And John sae glum and sad. 
Quoth he, ' I give up my housewife skep, 

I'll be nae mair gude-wife.' 
* Indeed,' quo she, 'I'm weel content. 

Ye may keep it the rest o' your life.' 

' Nae mair o' that,' quo' surly John, 

* I'll do as I've done before,' 
Wi' that the gude-wife took up a stoot rung 

And John made off to the door. 
' Stop, stop, gude-wife, I'll haud my tongue, 

I ken I'm sair to blame. 
But henceforth I maun haud the plough, 

And ye maun bide at hame.' " 



N. B. is singularly appreciative, and says : — 
" I almost wrote to you after the inspired ar- 
ticle on the ' Highly Respectable Person,' but 
the handle of the dresser drawer has settled 
it. You may be rather bitter, and at times 
somewhat unjustly sweeping in your remarks, 



Correspondence 155 

but you certainly are the most wonderful man ! 
I find it difficult to believe that you are one — 
but then no woman could write in quite such 
a trenchant style as yours. How do you find 
out all these little things that have been hid- 
den deeply in woman's breast all these ages? 
I should like to know. Do tell me how you 
do it — it is, most of it, so wonderfully and 
fearfully true. But I do wish that after stating 
some glaring fault you would give us the rem- 
edy. You simply make us unhappy without 
cheering us up again. I really feel every 
week as if I had had a kind of mental shower- 
bath. I am not a particularly good house- 
keeper myself, but I am young (23), and have 
time to improve. I have had a useful kind of 
husband, who is a great help to me in my va- 
rious little difficulties. He is much impressed 
with your remarks re butchers and coal bills, 
and I believe intends to act on them, at any 
rate with regard to the latter. I am looking 
forward with the greatest interest to your 
article on children. If you can, tell me how 
to manage a painfully intelligent boy of three, 
who treats his mother with affectionate patron- 
age, but never takes any notice of what she 
says. 

" That is really a great difficulty of mine. 
He is perfectly good and obedient to his father, 
and equally fond of him, but I can't manage 
him at all; and the worst of it is the baby, 



156 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

another boy of eighteen months, begins to im- 
itate him. I suppose boys are more difficult to 
manage than girls." 



A Non-Improving Property begins an in- 
teresting letter by saying of " A Mere Man " : 
— " I cannot feel quite sure whether he is writ- 
ing a skit on domestic management, or whether 
he is writing it seriously. If the former, he 
is, I think, just a little too serious, if the latter, 
too sweeping. It is said a woman has no sense 
of humor; that being understood, I am going 
to take ' A Mere Man ' seriously. 

" He certainly states the case correctly as 
regards the many, but surely he will allow- 
there is a very large exception that goes to 
prove this rule. English and American women 
labor under a great disadvantage in their do- 
mestic arrangements as compared with, say, 
the French, and, so far as I know to the con- 
trary, many other countries. We, as a rule, 
are not happy without absolute privacy in 
home life, its retail shopping, and consequently 
high prices, its washing days with its prover- 
bial cold mutton ; each little house has its own 
separate management, or as your ' Mere Man ' 
would say its mismanagement. It is useless for 
him to compare it to his own or other men's 
businesses, the two things can never be parallel 



Correspondence 1 5 7 

under present circumstances. His affairs are 
all worked on business lines and on a whole- 
sale scale, where, as he says, estimates of dif- 
ferent expenses can be obtained in all its 
branches. This could be done in households if 
we could bring ourselves to live as the French 
do; outside their homes chiefly, at cafes, res- 
taurants, boarding-houses and hotels, where 
everything is publicly arranged and catered 
for, and all is done on a business and whole- 
sale system. As it is, with our craving for 
domestic privacy, we must put up with its at- 
tendant evils, with the exception of those com- 
paratively few who are good managers and 
lucky in obtaining the cooperation of sensible 
servants and easy circumstances. And yet, 
with all my lack of humor, I still think * A 
Mere Man ' may be writing only a clever skit 
with a large amount of truth in it." 



Grandmother puts her points well : — " As 
a woman of experience, I beg to offer a few 
observations. I have always thought and be- 
lieved, and still do so, that domestic comfort 
is almost entirely in the hands of the wife; 
the husband can do little towards it, al- 
though he may observe that there is much 
to be done or altered. Nor can a husband so 
completely view a household as can his wife. 



158 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

If the wife is early, punctual, attends to do- 
mestic duties, so that the husband and father 
finds meals ready and well served, and children 
and servants under proper control, he will in 
time, though perhaps slowly, learn to value 
and respect his home, and the wife will find in 
that her great reward ; but if she fails in those 
duties, and she who ought to have been his 
guiding star is lost behind a cloud of idleness, 
frivolity, and perhaps extravagance, the hus- 
band is adrift, helpless, and finds comfort 
where he can. 

" The tendency of the last thirty years, to 
train girls for the acquirement of knowledge, 
scientific, linguistic, mathematical, mechanical, 
and the utter neglect of domestic training, is 
bringing forth bitter fruit, and sowing at the 
same time the seed of future family misery. 
I can tell you of two nice girls of fourteen 
and sixteen, sent to a college daily, to the ne- 
glect of domestic interest ; in about three years 
the younger was in her grave, overtaxed, both 
mentally and physically; in about five years 
the elder followed her. Neither of those girls 
could do needlework or follow any domestic 
pursuit. I can tell you of two more who said 
to their mothers, * Oh take us home ; we never 
see any of you.' Those mothers wisely did 
so. Where can a girl learn domestic duties 
if not in her own home? In Canada each 
girl takes a part in domestic work, and they 



Correspondence I59 

prove good wives. Let mothers keep their 
daughters at home, denying them no reasona- 
ble educational advantages." 



A Mere Woman handles this subject sen- 
sibly : " I have read with very much interest, 
amusement, and, I must confess, a little anger, 
the letters of ' A Mere Man.' Your corre- 
spondent is not a new variety of man, by any 
means ; in fact, he is quite a ' common or gar- 
den ' sort, the ' man who knows,' — or thinks 
he does. We (apparently superfluous) women 
meet him frequently. While strongly protest- 
ing against ' A Mere Man's ' unjustly sweep- 
ing condemnation of my sex, I am bound to 
admit, as I think will all women who have 
given the matter any thought, that he is justi- 
fied in much of his complaint; but may a 
kindly providence preserve us from his rem- 
edy ! He may prove in theory his superior fit- 
ness for the duties and responsibilities of 
' home-keeper,' but I venture to say, not in 
practice. 

" I feel very strongly on this subject, and 
have felt sad and indignant many times, as 
I have seen how very few women — compara- 
tively speaking — seemed to realize their re- 
sponsibilities and immense influence ; but sure- 
ly it is not because they are unfit and incapa- 



1 60 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

ble of filling their place in the world. The real 
reason, it seems to me, is because women are 
not prepared for it. Every boy is prepared 
and trained for the business or profession 
he is to adopt; his education is conducted 
with that end in view, and he usually serves 
an apprenticeship under a master before he 
finally enters upon his career. 

" In my opinion, the career of wife, mother, 
and housekeeper is of more importance than 
any other, and to what business or profession 
is so little training and preparation given? 
At what college or school is a girl taught 
anything of importance, relating to the care 
of a home and children, the management and 
value of money? I believe a great deal more 
is being done than formerly, especially among 
the poor, but it is merely a drop in the ocean 
compared with what might be done, and tho 
in many cases the home training is excellent, 
and, as a rule, a good housewife is the result, 
it is not so in the majority of cases. 

" The poor mother has not the time, even 
if she has the ability, to teach her child house- 
wifery. As soon as she leaves school she 
goes to help to keep another woman's house, 
without training, and disastrous is the result, 
as we who have to struggle with servants 
know; but that eternal grievance would be 
remedied if only a mistress understood what 
she required her servant to do. 



Correspondence 1 6 1 

" The average well-to-do and rich woman 
appears to think it quite unnecessary that her 
daughter should have a practical knowledge 
of nursing, cooking, and household manage- 
ment generally, in order to direct her servants, 
should she have a home of her own. I be- 
lieve woman's place is by the side of man, not 
behind, and not in front, as some of my sisters 
appear to believe, and she should be given 
every educational advantage that man has, 
which, with her own special training, will 
make her far more fit to perform the duties of 
wife and mother than her uneducated sister. 

" How can she manage the money en- 
trusted to her with judgment and economy un- 
less she has been taught the value of it ? Does 
every man become a good business or profes- 
sional man, and manage his affairs wisely and 
economically? What of the failures one too 
often meets, the men who are the ' hindmost ' 
in the race for life and all it holds ? It would 
be unfair to take such a man and hold him 
forth as a type of manhood, and say, man is 
not fit for the place in the world which he oc- 
cupies ; neither is it fair to take an incompetent 
woman and treat her as a representative of her 
sex. I cannot help thinking that * A Mere 
Man's ' domestic experiences must have been 
unusually unfortunate, to have given him such 
an unfair and distorted opinion of woman." 



1 62 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

E. J. J. writes with common sense: "Al- 
tho agreeing with a great many of *A 
Mere Man's ' remarks, I cannot help seeing 
that in some respects he is rather unreasonable. 
How, for instance, can he expect his house- 
hold expenses to decrease as his family grows 
up ? As the children grow older, there is nat- 
urally an increase in the expenditure; there may 
no longer be school bills to pay, but there are 
others which more than take their place. A 
grown-up daughter requires far more amuse- 
ment than a little girl in the schoolroom; she 
insists on being taken to all kinds of gaieties, 
and, greatest expense of all, she persuades 
her mother to entertain, and dinners, dances, 
and garden parties are the result. 

" All women are not good housekeepers, any 
more than all men are good men of business ; 
but I feel sure that a house managed by a 
man would not, as a rule, be a success. Are 
bachelor establishments usually particularly 
well managed? Is not the unfortunate bach- 
elor more often than not cheated right and left 
by his laundress and his housekeeper? 

" Even a widower usually has an aunt or a 
sister to look after his house and children, 
and if he does try to get along by himself, in 
nine cases out of ten his children run wild, his 
servants are careless and idle, and his house 
dirty and untidy. Of course this miserable 
state of affairs also occurs when the wife and 



Correspondence 163 

mother is indolent and imdomesticated ; but I, 
for my part, cannot think of a single case in 
which a man, left with a young family, has, 
alone and unaided, taken the reins of govern- 
ment into his hands, and produced a comfort- 
able and well-organized household. ' A Mere 
Man ' says, ' as regards children, men manage 
schools.' This is true enough, but men do not 
as a rule manage girls' schools ; neither are lit- 
tle children sent to school, and, unfortunately, 
both girls and babies are to be found in most 
families. However, I have no doubt the men 
could get over this difficulty, and manage their 
children with the greatest ease, but I should 
be sorry for the children who were managed 
at home on the same principles as when at 
school." 



An Old Dutch gives her opinions thus : — 
" Your accusations are too numerous and 
varied to deal with, but, as a wife and mistress 
of a house, I should like to say that my husband 
could enter his kitchen, late at night, as you 
suggest, without finding it the back slum of 
the house; neither would the drawers and 
cupboards be found to contain a heterogeneous 
mass of things. I have taken up the kitchen 
grievance in preference to others, because I 
consider that the state of things that exist 



164 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

in that department will generally prove what 
kind of a mistress is at its head. I think surely 
there are some of us who have a little respect 
for our husband's purse, and also for his com- 
fort, tho we may not get the credit of it, 
and I shall look forward, before you close your 
highly entertaining delineation of our charac- 
ters, to the hope that you will discover we 
possess some good qualities as befit man's help- 
meet, and that we are not altogether useless 
' lumber ' on the face of the earth." 



Vashti speaks for her sex as follows : — " I 
presume you do not object to non-rancorous 
criticism, and consequently I am emboldened 
to take a brief on behalf of my fellow-laborers, 
and ask that a search-light may be thrown im- 
partially over the whole question. 

" To begin with, then, may I ask, with all 
deference, if you do not think that men are a 
little to blame for the state of affairs in their 
households ? 

" Would it not be reasonable to expect that 
when a man feels matrimonially inclined he 
should look out for use rather than ornament, 
if he wishes his household to be governed on 
the most economic principles? Yet how few 
dx) this ! It strikes me very forcibly that dur- 
ing courtship outside attraction goes a long, 



Correspondence 165 

long- way in front of solid merit. I gather 
from your own papers that your wife was not 
chosen for her useful abilities. For what, 
then? I have no doubt for a pretty face and 
an engaging manner ! Well then, sir, I do not 
think you ought to blame us for unbusiness- 
like ways in our houses, when by your own 
admission you choose the head officer of your 
household for the very qualities you would 
scout in choosing a clerk, and without one 
thought as to whether she was capable of filling 
the post you offered. 

" Personally, I do not think it is reasonable 
to expect men to be entirely practical in a 
matter where love — real or so-called — is an 
important factor ; but then I do not think they 
ought to upbraid their wives later on for the 
absence of qualities they were never asked 
to possess. I believe one of the first principles 
of political economy is, that demand creates 
supply, a.nd we must hope that when fathers 
begin to realize that the young men of the 
future will expect their wives to be trained 
and proved housekeepers, they will take greater 
interest in the proper education of their daugh- 
ters, instead of spending everything on their 
sons. 

" To pass on to the question of servants, I 
much admire the theories you advance for 
their management, and think they would be 
excellent could they but be put into practice; 



1 66 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

but fear that unless a trades union for mis- 
tresses were formed it would be impossible to 
enforce them. 

" It is illegal in some localities to impose 
fines on servants, or deduct for breakages from 
their wages, without an agreement, and sup- 
pose I were to try to make my servants sign 
any such document, I feel sure they would 
be wise enough to betake themselves to an- 
other situation where they could break with 
impunity. 

" If you are serious in your desires for re- 
form, I wish most earnestly you would act 
as a reformer and earn the gratitude of all 
mistresses by starting a trades union of this 
description. I should only be too pleased to 
give in my name as one of the first to join, 
and would bring many friends with me. 

" I must tell you I am one of ' the few ' 
who keep a stock-pot always going, and have 
soup in plenty all the year round, without buy- 
ing any stock meat whatsoever. We also keep 
a pig, and consequently the objectionable swill 
pail ; but I do not think much goes into it that 
ought not to do so. 

" Regarding coal, it is certainly true we burn 
more in winter than in summer, but not to an 
appalling amount ; and considering that in 
summer we always have cold suppers instead 
of late dinner, I think the bills are pretty nearly 



Correspondence 167 

as they ought to be. We buy flour and pota- 
toes by the sack. 

" In conclusion, I should like to add that 
altho I have paid my bills regularly month 
by month for the eight years I have been 
married, I am positive I have not ruined my 
husband's credit, nor do I think it would be 
easy to do so, and I think in regard to that, 
you must have had small trades-people or 
clerks living in a large town in your mind, as I 
cannot think that regular payments could at 
all affect a professional man's credit." 



A. A. is at once complimentary and self- 
satisfied : — " I was delighted to read your ar- 
ticle of this week on the management of chil- 
dren; your previous papers I have only read 
with amusement. They do not apply to us, 
as my husband would like to tell you ; but this 
is a subject that deeply interests me. Every 
zvord you say is true, no language is strong 
enough in which to condemn the idiotic way of 
clothing children, which is considered by every- 
body a matter of course; it is marvelous to 
me that so many survive such treatment; but 
the discomfort the poor little things endure 
must be cruel. I have one child, a little girl of 
seven, who has been warmly and decently clad. 



1 68 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

according to your ideas and mine (and no one 
else's, it seems to me) from the time she was a 
few weeks old, and she has never had an ill- 
ness in her life, and has been entirely free from 
the perpetual cold in the head from which most 
babies seem to suffer, and which is caused, I 
am sure, by such management, or rather mis- 
management, as fills you with indignation. 

" If you can arouse women to a sense of the 
proper way in which to bring up a child from 
its birth to the age of three or four years, 
you will accomplish one of the reforms of the 
century. I wish you every success in your cru- 
sade." 



A Quiet Critic writes as follows : — " I am 
much interested in ' The Blunders of Women,' 
being a woman who has blundered all her life ! 
But I think, in common justice. Paterfamilias 
should go to the root of the matter, which 
is Human Nature, not Woman Nature. Man 
selects his mate through passion chiefly, and 
is naturally in a hurry — therefore he does not 
give himself time to select wisely. So, most 
men marry fools, or did — (the old order chang- 
eth — perhaps!) and fools breed other fools, 
and fools bring up their children foolishly, 
spoil their husbands, or worry them, or let their 
husbands ignore them. Ergo — ^blame Human 



Correspondence 1 69 

Nature in men first, then eliminate it — if you 
can — and women will be wiser." 



Homo speaks out and says : — " * A Mere 
Man ' is rather over-reaching himself. At first 
there was a large undercurrent of truth in his 
letters; lately, however, he Seems to me that 
he is greatly exaggerating the ' Blunders,' 

" I am a married man — and have been so a 
long time — I never saw my kitchen in the state 
he mentions, I have been in the kitchens of 
many other houses, and have never seen the 
mess there either, 

" With regard to the * servant question,' it is 
easy to take the stand he does respecting the 
management — ^but you cannot do with them 
as you would with your clerks. With clerks 
the supply is greater than the demand — ^with 
servants the demand greater than the supply — 
and the result is the servant has the whip 
hand. Still there is truth in what he says — 
a good mistress makes a good servant. My 
wife has no trouble to speak of with hers, and 
she keeps them a long time — one great secret 
being, from what I can see — always to be 
* firm, friendly, but never familiar.' 

" Well, our mutual friend may be able to 
manage his household affairs better than his 
wife, but I am jolly well sure I could not — ^nor 



I70 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

could the bulk of my friends manage theirs 
as well as their better halves. I am quite cer- 
tain there is not an atom of waste in any 
single way in this house, and were it not for 
my wife I should be a poorer man to-day than 
I am. 

" One point has struck me, and it must have 
struck others. 

" Of necessity ' Mere Man ' has formed his 
original impressions from his own home — 
for he could not have obtained them from 
outside sources, since men as a rule are not 
fond of airing such grievances — is he not, then, 
giving himself away, and coming to the con- 
clusion that all homes are as badly managed 
as his own? 

" One more point. Economy to a certain 
extent is all very well, but do you think that 
every man wants to run his home upon the 
same lines as his business? Is there not 
enough scheming, sweating, haggling, etc., in 
the average man's daily life to satisfy him? 
To me it is positive relief to be able to pay, say, 
my grocer a halfpenny a pound more for bacon, 
than necessary; it doesn't hurt me, and may 
mean to him just the difference between loss 
and profit. This everlasting competition is 
wearing men's lives out in business — why force 
it into private life if not absolutely necessary? " 



Correspondence 1 7 1 

It is the opinion of An Exceptional 
Woman that "A Mere Man" would do a 
great deal of good by his letters if women 
could only find it in their hearts to be less pre- 
judiced and a little broader-minded with re- 
gard to a man's judicious interference in do- 
mestic matters. 

" If women," she says, " would look at 
housekeeping in a more business-like way, I 
feel sure that their husbands themselves, and 
their children would benefit greatly thereby. It 
stands to reason that a successful man of busi- 
ness must know something of what he is about, 
and that such a man would not interfere in 
his wife's domestic arrangements without good 
cause, so that if the wife of such a man would 
listen patiently, without prejudice, she must 
obtain some advantage from his advice. But, 
as a rule, women will not listen, or, if they 
do so, with their mind made up beforehand that 
he knows nothing, and that his advice is, in 
consequence, unworthy. 

" But is this, after all, all a woman's fault? I 
think a woman is treated much more unfairly 
than a man. In her girlhood she is taught, 
besides her ordinary education, which she 
shares with her brother, to play the piano, to 
do a little painting, and drawing, and sew- 
ing, and then she is considered as an accom- 
plished woman, fit to take the responsibilities 



1 72 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

of a wife and housekeeper, the business in life 
of the majority of women. 

" But her brother is only allowed one or two 
of these accomplishments by way of recreation. 
He is put in his father's office, he is appren- 
ticed to his business, and taught it thoroughly 
from the first grade upwards. Who would 
ever thrust a young man into a post as man- 
ager of a business without his first having had 
a training for it, and expect him to manage 
it in a proper manner without having any one 
to show or guide him? But this is what is 
thrust upon women, and then they are blamed 
for their blunders. 

" If fathers insisted upon their daughters 
being taught properly, and, like their brothers, 
apprenticed in their own particular line of life, 
their husbands and children would feel the ben- 
efit of their education, and this would tend 
to enlarge and broaden the minds of the wom- 
en themselves, which are, without doubt, much 
biased and crippled in this respect at present." 



Old Buffer writes : — " Dear * Mere Man,' 
— All praise to you for your outspoken papers. 

" If anything is required to clinch your re- 
marks on the insane ' short-coating,' the fol- 
lowing figures from the tables of mortality 
should do it ; — 



Correspondence 1 73 

LONDON MORTALITY. 



Age. 


Number living. 


Decrement of 

death in 
the next year. 


Birth 


10.000 


3. 191 


1 year 6.809 


1-235 


2 " 


5-574 


538 


3 " 


5-036 


360 


4 " 


4.676 


243 



'* Thus, in the first year, 32 per cent. ; in the 
first two years, 44 per cent. ; and the first three 
years, 50 per cent, of the children born die, 
many of them, no doubt, from the undue ex- 
posure of their tender Httle bodies. 

" Peg away, my dear sir ; peg aw^y ! " 



A Mere Girl writes with considerable abil- 
ity and point. She says : — " Your letters on 
our domestic blunders have amused, interested, 
and occasionally made me very angry. I quite 
agree with you that we girls are badly educated 
in domestic matters, and have occasionally to 
buy our experiences. But it is not altogether 
our fault. Until eighteen or nineteen we are 
kept busy passing exams., in order to fit us 
for work in case of depreciation of property, 
and then — if there be no mother — paterfamil- 
ias deserts his club, and settles down, while his 



1 74 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

daughter is supposed perfectly capable of ' run- 
ning ' a house without assistance. I speak from 
personal experience. 



A Friendly Critic says : — " Like many 
other women readers, I have been following 
your course of articles with great interest. 
Though unwilling to say so, I must admit that 
you have put your finger on many sore spots in 
our domestic life and management. But you 
appear to me to lay to our door sins for 
which we are not responsible. You say ' the 
plague of London hardly equaled the infant 
mortality of a city like London or New York 
alone.' The same might probably be said of 
any large city, and as women are the caretakers 
of the children of these cities, you argue that 
they are to blame for the high infant death- 
rate. 

" Is it not a fact that the large death-rates 
of all our cities are produced by deaths 
amongst the children of the poor ? Is it not also 
a fact that amongst the poor the mother of the 
family goes out to daily work of some kind 
or other, and is in many cases the sole bread- 
winner for her family? She may do the best 
she can to provide some one to look after her 
children in her absence, but what proper su- 
pervision can there be in such cases? 



Correspondence 1 75 

" Again, are not many deaths directly or 
indirectly due to starvation ? Is the unfortunate 
mother of the family to blame when the 
earnings, scanty at the best — which ought to 
provide food for the children — are spent in 
drink, or when bad times come, and there are 
no earnings at all? Again, I do not at all 
agree with you that nearly all children are 
born healthy. Very many come into the 
world handicapped by hereditary disease. 

" When you speak of institutions for girls 
admirably managed by men, do you mean to 
say that in such institutions there is no female 
superintendent, or that in every detail the 
working of that institution is carried on by 
men ? To go back to the subject of infant mor- 
tality, it would be interesting to find out what 
proportion the infant death-rate bears to the re- 
maining death-rate amongst the classes where 
the mother of the family is not compelled by 
sheer necessity to be wholly or in part the 
breadwinner. If you could prove that the in- 
fant mortality in these classes is out of propor- 
tion to the entire death-rate of those classes, 
you would have done much toward establish- 
ing your case against us." 



Materfamilias writes much shrewd com- 
mon sense, and says, in her frank, outspoken 



1 76 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

reply : — " I expected a much more convincing 
attack, as it is easy to find fault even with the 
best regulated households— or offices — and we 
poor women are far from pretending, for one 
moment, that a great deal of what we do could 
not be better done. But our mentor, in this 
instance, after many preparatory assertions 
as to what he was going to do, seems to me 
to have accomplished very little; and I think 
any unprejudiced person who has read the pa- 
pers would conclude they had been indicted 
under the well-known advice, ' No case, abuse 
the plaintiff's attorney ! " 

" In the first place I maintain that the real 
point has been shirked and glossed over by * A 
Mere Man ' in his few opening remarks, and 
that a fictitious value has been given to this 
question of household expenses which it does 
not deserve, praise not being accorded where 
praise is due. 

" We are told he married his wife because 
he loved her, he has worked hard for her, and, 
in comparison with his office, what has he got 
for it? what are his assets? Now, it appears 
to me that an office is run for one thing, and 
for one thing only, and that is to make money ; 
but the home is created for a very different 
reason. It is to provide a companion in his 
joy and his sorrows, and for the man a loving 
companion, who endeavors to sustain him in 
his troubles, and who tends and cares for him 



Correspondence 1 7 7 

in his times of sickness. A mother for his 
children — one who will educate them in the 
way they should walk, teach them to fear God, 
honor their father and mother, and become 
good and upright men and women. 

" I take it that it is infinitely more necessary 
that a woman should be a good wife and 
mother than that she should be somewhat 
sharper at reducing expenses than a profes- 
sional housekeeper. ' A Mere Man ' seems to 
purposely miss these points. He talks of the 
fictitious value of love; but can love be val- 
ued? I think not. 

" Again, he refers to his wife as '' not an im- 
proving property,' which is as heartless as it 
is unfair, because there is no doubt that she is 
at least as improving a property as he is 
himself. However, having given the proper 
prominence to women's true vocations, against 
the smallest one of superior housekeeping ad- 
vocated by ' A Mere Man,' I will now go on to 
discuss his assertions, and I think it will be 
easily proved that a house managed upon the 
lines he suggests would be worse than one run 
upon any ordinary plan. 

" He opens in Chapter II by the assertion 
that ' nearly all we earn is spent on our homes 
and the luxury of our women folk.' The last 
part of the sentence must be met by a flat de- 
nial. Does any one, even a ' mere man,' believe 
within his innermost heart that a woman 



178 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

spends as much on her luxuries as he does? 
What about those seven dollar a hundred 
cigars, and that fourteen dollar a dozen port, 
which is carefully kept for his own consump- 
tion? not to mention those luncheons to busi- 
ness friends, at which champagne and liquors 
play such a prominent part. 

" But we will not press the point ; let us on 
to some * practical suggestions,' Even here, 
in this paper of ' proof,' they are difficult to 
find; but, as far as I can discover, the chief 
one is that a discount should be insisted upon 
from our bakers, butchers, and greengrocers. 
The passing remark that a woman does not 
know what her beef and mutton cost in the 
field is too absurd for serious consideration. 
Does a man know what his cigars cost in the 
leaf, or his wines in the grape? And would 
it be any good if he did? 



New York Woman takes a somewhat logi- 
cal tone : — " Conscience tells me there is some 
— perhaps much — truth in your papers on the 
* Domestic Blunders of Women,' but I should 
like to draw attention to a point which I think 
you, and men generally, overlook. Character 
— even a woman's — is to some extent consist- 
ent, and the qualities which men usually ad- 
mire in a woman are, I think, not those which 



Correspondence i79 

are correlative with business acumen. There 
are women who can make a bargain with 
tradespeople or others with the astuteness of a 
business man; but it is scarcely likely that 
such a one will have the grace, naivete, and 
general winsomeness which a man really reck- 
ons among the chief charms of woman. 

" In choosing a wife, a man usually desires 
a womanly woman, and avoids the ' strong- 
minded,' — so-called — of the sex. He must be 
prepared, therefore, to find her wanting in 
some of the qualities which he would require in 
a partner of his own sex. At the same time, 
he may justly expect her to be a reasoning and 
reasonable being, and able to enter into his 
views on pecuniary and other matters with 
intelligence. 

" But the training must commence before 
marriage, and it is very desirable that from 
first leaving school, a girl should have an 
allowance, and be shown, if she does not know, 
how to keep a simple cash account. It should 
be clearly understood this allowance must not 
be exceeded, or it will do harm instead of good. 
I think her father may well require to see her 
account quarterly, for the first year or two 
at least, to be sure it is being correctly kept. • 
This forms a basis of accuracy which will be 
useful in the larger field of housekeepmg. 

" Given an average woman, I think it an 
excellent plan for the wife to receive a weekly 



l8o The Domestic Blunders of Women 

allowance to cover all expenses connected with 
housekeeping, except perhaps coal and ser- 
vants' wages. It saves all ' bickering ' between 
the two. It should be large enough to cover 
needful replenishment of household linen and 
utensils, which may be done gradually with a 
little management. This plan seems to neces- 
sitate the payment of ready money, which you 
disparage ; but I think if the stipulated allow- 
ance were adhered to, you would find the meth- 
od a great saving, even though some interest 
on the money were lost. This, I think, can 
be obviated in part, by dealing, as far as pos- 
sible, at ready money stores, where equal goods 
are supplied at lower prices." 



Sybil stands up bravely for her sex. First : 
— " I admit that in a sort of whimsical way 
' A Mere Man ' has cause for at least some of 
his complaints. There are undoubtedly some 
very badly-managed homes, and there are many 
women who have no financial capacity at all; 
but it is not always — or even generally — the 
women who cannot keep accounts whose 
homes are uncomfortable, nor the mathemati- 
cal women whose households are ideal. I have 
often thought that men — especially business- 
men — are apt to carry business principles too 
far. Why should a home be burdened with 



Correspondence i8i 

the sordid consideration of whether every 
transaction with every tradesman or every 
workman has resulted in the largest possible 
advantage to oneself and the smallest to him? 
That appears to be the soul of business, but it 
does not seem very ennobling. 

" In my experience — nearly ten years of 
married life — I have found that butchers are, 
in a sense, honest. That is, if I go and choose 
or order a certain joint I get it — I know the 
price of each joint — and if I order the best 
I pay for the best. If I do not get the best I 
complain, but seldom have to complain twice. 
With regard to * beating down ' a tradesman, 
I never do that; but I know women who do, 
and I also know that they gain nothing by it. 

" The ' Mere Man,' however, gives no weight 
to the possibility of women's lives containing 
more intellectual duties than haggling over 
chops. If it were not so, it would indeed be 
asked by womenkind, ' Is life worth living ? ' 
For my part, I should consider it absolute 
waste of time to call personally at every shop 
each time the necessary household purchases 
had to be made, although my home is * buried ' 
in the country, where the eternal ' calling for 
orders ' is unknown, and considerable fore- 
thought has to be exercised in order to keep 
up the household stock of every kind. 

" I think the ' Mere Man ' exaggerates the 
condescension of man in marrying woman. 



1 82 The Domestic Blunders df Women 

After all, a man marries of his own free will, 
and he should have the sense to realize — with 
his vaunted business capacity — that his house- 
hold expenses will increase and not decrease 
year by year. I believe most men vaguely 
fancy that when they furnish a house — say on 
their marriage — they have bought all they will 
require in that house for the rest of their nat- 
ural life ; and then when, in a few years, some 
more saucepans have to be invested in, they feel 
grieved, and think that some one has been very 
much to blame. Saucepans will not last many 
years, however well they are treated, nor will 
' children's stockings,' alas ! Many weary 
mothers can testify to that. 

" Men have their own business worries — 
why should they add to them the infinitely 
more worrying worries of domestic economy? 
Most women bear these cheerfully, and over- 
come them tactfully, and contrive to have a 
smiling welcome for the breadwinner. Could 
a wife not be trusted to spend sufficiently wise- 
ly? If not, does not the mistake lie deeper — 
in the original choice of a wife ? The ' Mere 
Man ' overlooks altogether the possibility of 
the wife's possessing an income of her own; 
but perhaps that is beside the question. 

" The management of servants is, of course, 
a serious undertaking, and nothing but expe- 
rience teaches one the best course to pursue. 
Doubtless, there is room for much improve- 



Correspondence 183 

ment in the training of girls for domestic ser- 
vice, and the desultory way they pick up the 
little they know is far from an ideal method. 
" * A Mere Man ' says ' servants are what 
their mistresses make them.' To a certain ex- 
tent they may be, and without doubt a good 
mistress has a large amount of influence over 
them; but, then, as every mistress is different, 
and every servant an individual, it is useless 
to generalize on such a topic. The family cir- 
cle — particularly in England — is so isolated, 
that no rules suitable to a factory or a work- 
shop can be of any avail. Each household is a 
law to itself." 



Petruchio takes up the cudgels for his 
wife : — " I have had a hard enough task to 
keep my Katherine's hands off ' A Mere Man ' 
from week to week. With the appearance 
of his onslaught against a mother's manage- 
ment of her children, the pent-up volume of in- 
dignation has overflowed, quite in her old 
shrewish style. As she has confiscated my 
latch-key and knocked off all sporting papers 
until I reply to ' A Mere Man's ' mischievous 
doctrines, I am compelled to undertake the 
duty of scribe. So here goes. 

" Katherine insists that she can not only 
' put hand upon her heart and truthfully say * 



184 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

that she knew what 'to do ' with our Coris- 
ande when the mite brought joy into this 
household, but she can continue to keep her 
hand over that organ without flinching and 
offer priceless advice to parents in general. I 
can certainly confirm my spouse's assertion 
that, for some months prior to baby's advent, 
a perfect library of works, of the * Advice to 
Mothers ' order, pervaded our residence. 

" Prepared indeed ! ' This anonymous 
creature will want to dispute the value of 
goose oil in cases of croup next,' cries my wife 
wrathfully. ' A Mere Man ! ' A mere fool, say 
I ; a crusty old maid or bachelor to boot. 

" Katherine is especially incensed over ' A 
Mere Man's ' monstrous ignorance on the sub- 
ject of short-coating. Every mother worthy of 
the name knows that a ' three-quartered ' cos- 
tume intervenes between the long and the short 
periods of infantile draping. As for babies 
grovelling about in draughts stark-naked, my 
indignant helpmate considers it a stark-mad 
idea altogether, only applied to poor little gut- 
ter children whom poverty and stupidity impel 
towards premature dissolution. In fact, she 
thinks ' A Mere Man's ' experiences must be 
gathered from the slums rather than the well- 
ordered, middle-class nursery. Katherine adds 
that she will be happy to demonstrate to bona- 
Me visitors the admirable three-quarter sys- 



Correspondence 185 

tern as exemplified on the person of our thriv- 
inp- Corisande." 



ing Corisande.' 



These are the views of A Mere Woman 
AND Mother : — " In answer to ' A Mere Man ' 
I should say his trumpeter is dead. He speaks 
of women in three classes — ^Angels, slum 
women and cow women. I am sure the sex 
ought to be highly edified and grateful. As he 
knew the different classes of women so well, 
why didn't he choose an angel? 

" Paterfamilias owns that he married for 
love. If he didn't trouble himself about a 
woman who could manage for him before he 
was married, why do so now? If he gives 
love and she returns it, what has he to grum- 
ble about ? If he married without counting the 
cost, that's his look-out, not his wife's. 

" Again he says : ' My office has improved.' 
Has he done all the work himself? what about 
his helpers? Undoubtedly they are good busi- 
ness men, who work and stay with him for the 
sake of their wives and families. His poor 
wife, on the other hand, is worried to death 
to get willing and conscientious helpers even 
at a high price, as servants are so scarce. They 
are generally single women who have no one 
depending on them, and so, in many cases, will 
not be told how, or what to do, or when to do 



1 86 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

it. If they cannot have their own way they 
will leave, as they know they can easily get 
other places. Not so with his subordinates. 

" Again he says ' there should be nothing 
simpler in the world than to manage a house, 
a few servants, and a few children,' but ' A 
Mere Man ' has left out the master of the 
house. Granted men manage restaurants — so 
they oug'ht — this represents only one branch 
of woman's work. The poor wife has to see 
to the supply of provisions for the whole fam- 
ily, arrange for the coolcing, and manage the 
cook — which is the hardest of all. 

" Next, about the children. The woman 
bears them, rears them, always has them with 
her except when at school or out with the 
nurse, whom she can't always trust, and when 
they are grown up they give her more anxiety 
than when young. What man could shield, 
guide, and counsel girls like a mother? 

" The sum and substance of ' A Mere 
Man's ' grumbling seems to be money. It's a 
pity he ever loved a woman, for if he had not 
he might have saved his dollars and had suffi- 
cient income to manage some one else's house- 
hold." 



This is what Len says: — "Your way of 
looking upon home as a branch of your busi- 
ness is original; but to require it to show a 



Correspondence 187 

profit on paper seems to me sheer nonsense. 
However, taking it in your own way, my opin- 
ion is that if the comforts of home have de- 
creased with you, this, to some extent, rejflects 
on yourself — you are the head of the firm, 
so, if you were as wise and clever as you say 
you are, your wife and daughters would not be 
such a poor dunderheaded lot as you make 
them out to be. 

" Women are much more careful in spend- 
ing money than you give them credit for. Their 
method of purdhasing when they like and 
where they like is unquestionably a better plan 
than what you suggest. For instance, if they 
tied themselves, as you say, to one butcher, 
they would have less choice ; and as to the 
discount — well, every tradesman must have a 
reasonable profit, and if you do not pay the 
proper price, he will have to cheat somebody, 
and the probability is that you will yourself 
suffer. 

" Neither do women purchase in such out- 
of-the-way proportions of the various articles 
required; they plan things out to a much 
greater nicety than men could do if they had 
the task to perform. It is generally the caprice 
of the man at the table that makes the articles 
served up appear out of proportion. 

" Now, Mr. ' Mere Man,' I begin to think 
you are a very queer stick! After advising 
that a woman should go to her butcher and get 



1 88 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

discount for weekly payments, I find that you 
censure her because she will insist on paying 
weekly. I don't wonder at your house being a 
badly-managed one, because, with such an in- 
consistent head, nobody would know what to 
be at. I believe women do quite right in buying 
their household goods, dresses, etc., for cash; 
the credit system is often the cause of the pur- 
chases exceeding the income, and, therefore, 
sooner or later bringing trouble. 

" There may be some little truth in your 
charge that women love to spend money, and 
are unable to account for every shilling they 
spend; but are men any better iii these re- 
spects ? 

" Your manner of doling the cash out to 
the woman is rather mean. Where there is a 
true wife she has as much right to the money 
as the man has, and where she is taken into his 
confidence, and the man treats her properly, 
she will make a better use of household money 
than he could." 



Common-sense contributes a running fire 
of comment : — " I should like to point out 
some of the more glaring discrepancies in your 
articles. To begin with, you do not state the 
size of your family. ' Your wife and daugh- 
ters,' evidently no sons, daughters only, shall 



Correspondence 189 

we say two, three, or ten? It is impossible to 
consider the servants' question unless we know 
the number of the grown-up members of your 
family. 

" ' Assets, etc., wife not an improving prop- 
erty.' Are you 'an improving property?' is 
your temper better than it was ? etc. ' Any man 
could manage a house, etc., to greater advan- 
tage than any woman.' What is that quotation 
of some people ' rushing in where angels fear 
to tread ' ? — you might look it up. ' O ! glori- 
ous power of self opinion, for none are fools in 
thy dominion.' 

" ' Butchers make no allowance for bone or 
fat.' Do you think for a single moment that 
any man could induce a monopolist like a 
butcher to allow for bone, ' a butcher's fair 
profit ' ? There is not such a thing as a fair 
profit in the butcher's business, for it is said 
that any butcher who sells a beast a week can 
live, bring up his family, and drive his gig. 

" I was once behind the scenes running a 
large catering business at a big exhibition in 
the provinces; the manager, a capable busi- 
ness-like German, could make no impression on 
the butcher, and you should not expect your 
wife to do so. 

" * Fish — provide three pounds mackerel and 
won't provide one pound salmon.' The size of 
your family being omitted, I can only judge 
that your wife prefers that all the family shall 



190 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

partake of fish, while you evidently want that 
pound of salmon for your own and her con- 
sumption, while the children go without ! 

" ' Check for twenty tons of coal paid for 
in advance.' What an absurd idea ! A business 
man would place a contract or open order for 
a given weight to be delivered at such a rate 
per month at a stated price, and pay for it as 
he got it — ' when the blind lead the blind,' etc. 
Save $1.00 a ton indeed; it means simply lock- 
ing up money for a year in advance, and pos- 
sibly, if the coal merchant dies or levants, los- 
ing your money. 

" ' Housekeeping money, false pretenses, 
criminal negligence.' What a nice man you 
are, what a treat for your neighbors! Think 
it over, old man, and apologize. ' Never saw 
the saucepans or the stockings.' You imply 
evidently that your wife never bought them, 
that it was a mode of thieving. Thank good- 
ness that you have a wife at all, for certainly 
you don't deserve one. Buying ' half the items 
that are not pressing,' etc. — why not say your 
wife is an absolute fool? it would save 
time. 

" ' Paying cash destroys credit,' * order 
goods, and when bills come in, pay something 
on account,' — and this man pretends to be in 
business for himself. Well, somebody in his 
office has to take care of him; that is plain 
enough. He grudges the interest on the money 



Correspondence IQI 

paid in weekly accounts, and would like the 
money in his business, though he recommends 
paying the coal merchant in advance. Another 
Solomon, does he not know that by paying 
weekly, his wife only pays once for goods got ? 
She can remember a week's trivial items, 
while ' A Mere Fraud ' (I mean ' A Mere 
Man ') himself, if he adopted his own system, 
would be paying for goods received two or 
three times over; besides, if he wants to cal- 
culate how much his housekeeping costs him, 
it is all plain : compare one week with another, 
as far back as he likes, of the different trades- 
people; and he is, moreover, able to sit and 
rest at home in an evening without everlast- 
ingly hearing that 'Mr. So-and-So has 
brought his bill and is waiting for the money,' 
as would be the case under his foolish plan. 
Let ' A Mere Man ' take up the fact that the 
women he accuses of criminal negligence, false 
pretenses, and stigmatizes (indirectly) as a 
thief, has more business acumen than he is pos- 
sessed of. 

" ' Nurses get discount on the milk for the 
nursery, and the cook for kitichen goods.' Evi- 
dently ' Mere Man's ' nurse pays the milkman's 
bills and the cook pays the butcher ! ' A little 
knowledge is a dangerous thing.' 

" ' Women's mission is to put the blame on 
someone else; Eve began it.' Really, Mr. 
* Mere Man,' if you must write something, do 



192 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

for goodness' sake state facts, for you must 
know that man, to his eternal shame, began it. 
He put the blame on Eve — ' The woman 
tempted me and I did eat.' Now he was a 
' mere man,' I admit, but it was not a manly 
way of meeting the case. If there had been 
any society at all, he would have been hounded 
out of his club, and sent to Coventry for his 
meanness ; if it had been the other way about, 
would the woman have split upon the man and 
blamed it upon him? No. I have always been 
a bit ashamed of Adam — but this is a digres- 
sion. 

" ' Bachelors keep their servants for years 
treasures,' etc., because Bachelor is out two- 
thirds of his time, they do as they like, and rob 
him left and right as well. 

" ' Sulky female servants will do anything 
for the master or the young gentlemen.' Oh! 
blind bat, where is your understanding? Why 
is this? you say; why indeed? If you cannot 
reason that out, you can't expect to shine very 
much in your domestic aspirations of a perfect 
home-life with a man at the helm. 



Sonny waxes warm and personal. He 
says : — " I have read with some interest the let- 
ter of ' A Mere Man,' and it seems to me that 
he had better take the advice of a certain gen- 



Correspondence I93 

tleman who calls himself a ' Black Philoso- 
pher,' and says, ' All you married men had 
better go and hang yourselves.' He seems to 
think the world was made for himself alone, 
and for the special benefit of his money-grub- 
bing propensities. In the opening of his letter 
he says he married his wife because he loved 
her. He has worked all his life for the same 
cause. Does he slander her because he loves 
her too ? I am not married myself, but I know 
how my mother has managed our house, loved 
and cared for us all at home, so I must say a 
word in her defense. Does your correspondent 
think, when he sees his family growing up 
around him, his daughters growing into 
women, that he has lived in vain ? Does he not 
think that they have a mission in life to fill? 
Does it not give him some sort of satisfaction 
to think, ' I have done all I can for them, I 
trust them, they will never be a reproach to 
me ' ? If this is no satisfaction to him it 
ought to be. And then in his old age. Oh ! that 
is the time he will find his satisfaction. * I shall 
always have them round me to comfort me 
when I am old,' is a thought that is uttered by 
thousands of fathers and mothers, and it com- 
forts them. 

" No ! Your correspondent is one of those 
miserable mortals who sees nothing in any 
other light but that of gain. Gain is the motive 
power of his life; but some day he must pay 



194 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

the debt of nature, and then to what use his 
gold, for he cannot take it with him ? He must 
think all women are fools, and cannot think 
for themselves. ' They cannot cook,' he says. 
Now, I am in the city, and go day by day to 
one of our big restaurants for my lunch, but 
never have I had anything yet like I get cooked 
at home, and any sensible woman can cook. 

" Men do this, and men do the other ; but 
could a man darn his own socks, sew on his 
own buttons, and do housework ? I very much 
doubt. 

" 'A Mere Man ' had better go to some place 
far away from the hands of woman, and live 
entirely by himself, and see how he gets on. 
The world will go on very well without him." 



The Cherub tries to hit one nail squarely 
on the head when he says : — " Many people 
seem to think that there are only two reasons 
why a man marries a woman. First, they put 
the mere desire of possession, and secondly, 
the getting someone who will manage the 
house. They are both utterly worthless from 
the point of view of marriage. Any man with 
a modest income can procure both. But the 
one thing that money will never buy is the 
sweet companionship and sympathy of an in- 
telligent woman whom he loves and who loves 



Correspondence 195 

him. Any couple of average intelligence can 
get rid of the perfectly sordid details that seem 
to form the bulk of the average married exist- 
ence. 

" You have said, piteously, that your home 
does not pay, and show an improving return, 
I cannot see that you have put down the main 
asset at all; if it does not exist, it is indeed a 
bankrupt concern, and I am sorry for you." 



Materfamilias the Second writes with 
flowing pen and ever-increasing indignation: 
— " I can no longer refrain from taking up the 
cudgels in defense of my sex. I know that 
most men imagine that a man could manage 
the house much better than his wife. If this 
is true, why is it not more frequently done? 
and how does it happen that when a man loses 
his wife he does not manage the house himself, 
but after, at most, a few months of domestic 
discomfort and mismanagement, invariably 
marries again? 

" This won't do. Is it in the nature of man 
to let pass unused such an opportunity of dis- 
playing his superior powers? 

" Speaking of clubs and hotels, I have this 
on the authority of men that where an hotel is 
extra comfortable and successful, you will find 
a woman at the head; but where a man man- 
ages, the waste is often exceptionally great. 



196 The Domestic Blunders of Women 

" ' A Mere Man ' prefaces his second paper 
with the statement that a man gets nothing 
out of his earnings save board and lodging, 
and these of a very unsatisfactory character, 
owing to the extravagance and mismanage- 
ment of his wife. Speaking from the experi- 
ence of all my married friends, I take exception 
to this in to to, and remark, Where is the man 
who does not spend more in sundries — such as 
cigars, drinks, billiards, golf, etc. — than he al- 
lows his wife altogether? 

" I pass your correspondent's sarcastic re- 
marks on cooking a chop or potato, and will 
discuss the ability to purchase. I wonder how 
many butchers could corroborate his state- 
ment, and how many would not rather have the 
husband to deal with than the wife? Though 
I admit my husband is a fairly sensible and 
reasonable man, I have simply dreaded his visit 
to the butcher, knowing that my resources 
would be taxed, not so much to cook the meat, 
as to be able to use, without waste, the exces- 
sive quantity. 

" I am glad ' A Mere Man ' got his morning 
roll at the proper time, and took the trouble to 
fight for it himself ; his wife would not grudge 
him that privilege. In giving her this assist- 
ance he shows the most pleasing feature of his 
character, and if he will cultivate this spirit in 
other matters belonging to the house, he will 
cease to find so much fault. Most husbands 



Correspondence 197 

resent being asked to give advice upon domes- 
tic affairs, and generally reply, ' Please your- 
self,' or ' Don't bother me.' Such is my experi- 
ence. 

*' May I ask if, when man and wife enter the 
married state, they start as equal partners? 
If so, why should one give a detailed account 
of expenditure and not the other? Is it not 
most galling to a woman who has left a home 
of comfort or ease, or possibly given up a 
profitable calling (and, believe me, there are 
many such), to have to ask for money at all, 
much more to be obliged to account for every 
penny spent? 

" It would save much unhappiness if, at the 
start of married life, every man would make a 
definite allowance to his wife, according to his 
means, over which she should have entire con- 
trol, and be in no way called upon to account 
for. Surely no average man would choose for 
his wife a woman he could not trust to that 
extent. 

" ' A Mere Man ' must have for his wife a 
woman much to be pitied, and if she is so 
easily and invariably gulled by trades-people, 
we may conclude that it is possible for her to 
have been deceived by him. Poor woman ! If 
all of us could learn to imitate some of man's 
strong business habits, and when we go shop- 
ping have the forethought to ask each shop- 
keeper to ' take a drink ' as a preliminary, we 



19^ The Domestic Blunders of Women 

might then hope to make successful business 
transactions, and if we only knew how to 
speculate and lose we might be the objects of 
sympathy rather than blame." 



Scotch Lassie sends the following apt quo- 
tation from J. M. Barrie : — " She loved him, 
but probably no woman can live with a man 
for many years without having an indulgent 
contempt for him, and wondering how he is 
considered a good man of business." 



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